


Speechless

by claptondodance (orea_domina)



Category: Actor RPF, American Actor RPF, Josh Hutcherson - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:13:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 43,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orea_domina/pseuds/claptondodance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years from now a mysterious biological agent turns humanity into a roaming wandering mass of hungry zombies and Josh Hutcherson is stuck in LA with all the vapid, silicone encrusted undead.<br/>Will Roxie, the martial arts junkie who's spent her whole life avoiding those very people (including Josh) help him cross the country to get back to his family unscathed?<br/>Will anyone survive at all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

OCTOBER

It has been two months since the world ended.

As far as I know, my family is gone. As far as I know, everything is gone.

My name is Roxie. I am twenty-three years old. I am in the place that used to be Los Angeles. As far as I know I am completely alone, because everyone I’ve met is dead.

I run through the checklist.

Water, check.

Weapons, check.

Food, check.

I strap on my pack and prepare to leave the small building I’ve been using as a shelter for the last few nights. Used to be a chinese restaurant, I think. The kind with dirty corners and a lot of sugar in their food. But there’s nothing now except the four walls and a few cheap decorations. All the food was picked clean a long time ago.

I can’t stay long anywhere, if you stay too long they eventually find you. Smell you out. It’s morning, and I have the day to find another place to stay. Places to avoid, low ground: no visibility. High buildings: no escape. I once spent three nights in an overturned Chevy Suburban because I was desperate. And lucky. Nothing came by except a few stray dogs and one lone ambler dragging a broken leg.

The first thing I learned was that it’s the head that’s important. You can’t stab them through the heart, they keep going. Disconnect the head from the body, then make sure the brain is deactivated. Better to just go for the brain if you can. I took it out with a knife to the neck vertebrae before it even knew I was there. Another thing you learn to do. Dehumanize. Even gender labels can bring up emotions you don’t want in the middle of a fight.

My first kill, my first _real_  kill, I was cornered. She reminded me of my mother, with long dark hair and a small frame. She wasn’t very strong, but the virus gives even the weakest body strength you wouldn’t believe. With one drive. To eat. There was no nutritional need anymore. Just drive. I’d seen a dead one with his own gut ripped out stuffing his mouth just to have the gore fall out his belly again and again. He may even still be there, eating the same piece of rotting goo over and over until it’s just a smear he can’t pick it up off the ground anymore.

I killed the woman who reminded me of my mother, eventually. Backed her up against a wall and stabbed her through the eye with a knife I’d been clutching but too scared to use. I’d cried for hours after. And then when I’d been thirsty because I’d wasted so much water I’d bucked the fuck up and decided it wasn’t worth it. I had to do what I had to do. Because  _I_  have one drive. Survive.

I walk for the better part of the day, running into nothing and no one. But I don’t pick up any new supplies or find anything useful.  
  
I’m in a better part of town today. I can imagine that famous people might have lived in a neighborhood like this. I might check to see if there’s food left, but there’s little chance of that and if someone is lucky enough to be holed up in one of the houses, they might be the type who have panic rooms and guns.  
  
Out of the corner of my eye I catch movement. Slowly, because if it’s a dead one it’ll go for quick movement, or the smell of fresh meat; I check quickly behind an open gate before I slip back, unsheathing my knife.  
  
And run straight into a body.

 

 


	2. | LA | OCT

My mind accelerates to light speed like someone has floored the gas pedal on the Millenium Falcon.  

Something is wrong. 

There was nobody there a second ago. There was nothing there a second ago.

  
Arms wrap around me, one around my torso pinning my knife arm and tucking a pistol into my ribs, one over my mouth. 

Something is very wrong. 

This body is warm. 

In a million years, I’d rather be eaten to death by dead people than held as someone’s sex or breeding slave for who knows how long, or raped to death over a few days or weeks. A million. fucking. years. 

“Shhhhhhh…” a voice says in my ear, and the adrenaline suddenly coursing through my veins is like a donkey kick to the head. In a split second I’m ready to smash his insole and jam my knife into any available surface with the few inches of leeway I have. He can’t make me drop my knife, it’s tethered to my arm. Nothing like losing a good knife in some dead asshole’s skull when a swift yank with your wrist can pull it free. 

“Shhhhhh!” the voice says again, more urgently. “I’m trying to help you.” 

Fuck that. I can help myself. 

“I’m going to let go of your mouth. Don’t scream or they’ll hear you. I swear to god, I am trying to help.” 

I squirm and he tightens his grip, jamming the gun into my side. I can feel the heat of his body pressed against mine. 

“Or we can do it the hard way,” he huffs. “Look to your left, down the street about 500 yards. Right where you would be right now if I hadn’t stopped you. Under the tree next to the stop sign.” 

Fuck. Rapers. Four of them. I would have run straight into them. My head is obviously not in the game today. It’s a scout group, but they are heavily armed and I would have been outnumbered. I freeze, the adrenaline in my veins turning to liquid hydrogen. 

“Okay. Are you on board now?” he whispers. “We need to get out of their range. I’m going to let go of your mouth. Scream and I’ll shoot you in the head before they can get to you. But don’t. fucking. scream. Okay?” I nod and he lets go. 

I spin him. I twist his wrist quickly and he drops his gun as I finish the move and take his arm up and into his scapula by the wrist, pushing him up against the wall. I bring my knife to his throat with my other hand. He’s small, compact. Like a wrestler. One of those solid and wiry fuckers who is much, much stronger than he looks. Still, he’s not the only one with the element of surprise going for him. And he’s not the only one who is stronger than they look. 

“Who the fuck are you?” I growl in his ear. 

“Hey! Hey! Take it easy! I just saved your ass!” he hisses. 

“Yeah, I’m familiar with how people can be “friendly” these days.” 

“Well, you’re doing pretty well at that. I swear, I just wanted to offer you shelter. I have food. And water.” 

“Why?” There was only one reason I could think of. Okay, maybe two. Or five. 

“It’s going to be night soon. You know what happens at night. You won’t be safe.” 

I do. And it isn’t good. He goes limp in my grasp, no longer resisting. I let him go, but I hold my knife out defensively. 

“How far? 

“Not very far. Right through there.” He nods toward the top of the hill. 

“Is it your house we’re going to?” 

“No, but the people who were here before don’t, uh, need it anymore. So kind of. I guess. I live there now.” He picks up his weapon from where he dropped it and quickly tucks it into his belt. “Come on. Quick.” 

We waste no more time. I follow him through a small suburban labyrinth to a house that sits on relatively high ground, with an escape route out the back. It has a high fence, probably to keep out the paparazzi. But now it serves as a more than adequate physical barrier. He secures the gates and takes me inside, past the makeshift cisterns and the plywooded windows. 

Once we’re inside he visibly relaxes, his chest deflating and refilling. He shakes his head from side to side, cracking his neck loudly, rubbing the thick ropes of muscles in it absentmindedly. 

“Hi,” he says, holding out his hand. Obviously relieved that 1) we’re alive and 2) I haven’t killed him yet. “I’m Josh.” 

I sheath my knife but don’t take his hand. “Roxie.” 

“Still suspicious?” he says, wiping his hand off on his jeans, like that’s what he meant to do all along. “Um, let me show you around.” 

“Hold on.” I stand my ground, in reach of the door. “Why did you do this? Why did you help me? Bring me here?”

He sinks into a chair and shrugs. 

“I don’t know. I thought you were going to get into trouble, and I just…” 

“Are you here by yourself?” I remember that I’m not the only one who has reason to distrust people as he re-adjusts his gun in his belt and rests his hand casually on the grip.

“Yeah.” 

“How long?” 

“Since everything started. Since the evacuations. My family—” he chokes back something hard, clearing his throat loudly, “—is in Kentucky. Or they were when this all started. My friends were out of town too. I have no idea where anyone is. Even my dog was there.” His head sinks back into the chair and he rubs his eyes with his non-gun hand. “How about you?” 

“My family didn’t make it. I don’t know where my friends ended up. I was at work when we got the evacuation order. I went to my parent’s house but…” my throat tightens and I look down uncomfortably. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Me too. At least you have hope your family is out there somewhere.” 

He nods and sits up, giving me a long, hollow look. Like it might just be worse to not know. 

 

 

“Do you want to sit down?” he says quietly. “Or I have a shower rigged up in the back with rainwater. There’s not much in there right now, we need some rain, bad. But it’s enough to wash up a little bit.” 

“Are you kidding me? I would kill for a shower. And I mean that literally.” 

That’s when I get the first real, genuine laugh I’ve heard in so long it seems like years. I laugh too, but it’s nervous and small.  _I’m just not used to it,_  I tell myself because it feels as dangerous as throwing a match into a field of dry brush doused in gasoline.   

“We should take turns sleeping,” he says. “We could both get some tonight. Sleep I mean,” he backtracks quickly, looking almost panicked. He really doesn’t want to spook me. “That came out wrong,” he grins nervously and sighs. “This place is pretty secure but I haven’t really slept in… I can’t even remember.” 

“I know what you mean.” We were both thinking the same thing. The two of us together have a better chance than either of us did alone. Especially if he wants to do what I would bet water he wants to do. 

“Do you want to sleep first?” he asks. “After you shower?” 

I don’t know what to even say. I have an idea why he needs me, and it isn’t what I had been afraid of. But isolation does things to your mind, and people turn on a dime these days. He wanted me to get naked? That was not gonna happen. “That’s nice, but—” 

“If I wanted to hurt you I would have done it by now.” He removes his hand from his gun and holds it up. 

“I know.” The thought of cleaning the gunk and blood and who knows what else out of my hair and off of my skin sounds so good I could cry, but I stuff that back down real quick. 

Instead I set down my pack and take a seat in a plump looking recliner by the door. I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. My head falls back, and I close my eyes, just for a minute, I tell myself. 

Just for a minute.

 

 

 


	3. | KY | SEPT

Kentucky

****

“Hey, Michelle! What do you think?” Andre steps out of his bedroom and strikes a pose. He is decked out in a Jem t-shirt that he’s knotted at the waist, neon blue leopard print spandex shorts, lilac leg warmers, heavy boots and an authentic vintage Jane Fonda terry cloth headband.

 

“Okay, when I said ‘Go pick out some clothes from our closet’ you know I meant Chris’s clothes,” she chuckles, unable to contain the laughter anymore as Andre continues to get his vogue on. “I don’t even remember bringing any of that here. Someone must have decided I wouldn’t miss anything from the deep, dark, should-have-gone-to-charity-in-1987 depths of my closet. The boots are good. Very practical.” She nods towards the steel toed Timberlands he is wearing. “Aren’t you cold in that spandex?”

“No. And I can’t help that I’ve lost weight. My bear-ish figure is going to be all gone soon. No more Big Sexy.” He pats his shrinking belly and frowns. “This zombie apocalypse diet sucks. Fuck low carb. Fuck that paleo shit. Fuck…whatever. I would give anything for some In and Out right now.”

She wags a warning finger. “Oh no, no, no, no you don’t. Do not go there,” she says sternly, then sighs, obviously frustrated. “Damn you, Andre! Now my mouth is watering. You are going to pay for that. Someday, somehow.”

“Uh huh. You just try, lady. I’ve got my skull squishers on today,” he grins, stomping his feet.

“‘Squishers?’” she chuckles and starts downstairs when the sound of a weapon firing interrupts the rare light moment.

Andre breaks into a run and flies down the stair ladder behind her.

“Amanda! Connor!” she yells as she picks up a rifle from the impromptu weapons stash by the door. Andre follows quickly with a crossbow. They are out the steel framed door and onto the deck in a matter of seconds.

“What’s happening?”

“Just a straggler,” Connor calls out from the other side of the steel shuttered cabin. They are at their cabin by the lake, the one that only a few people know about. The one that Josh knows to regroup to.

Josh knows because he had it built after Catching Fire came out, partly as a joke, mostly as a family getaway location, definitely as a precaution they hoped they’d never need. Climate change, too many people, not enough resources. The signs were becoming too glaring to ignore.

He commissioned a company that specialized in steel clad cabins on stilts that were designed to be secure while the owners were away. They also happened to function perfectly as a stylish weekend retreat and completely defensible fortress.

 

  
  


It was much larger than the cabins previously designed by the company. He wanted it to house up to twelve people max, eight comfortably. It had wrap around balconies, the entire building was on slender steel stilts, and it could be completely closed up with steel shutters on a pulley system that closed with one central and very Vernian hand crank wheel. A small tribute to the Journey movies that had helped pay for it.

 

  
  


The glass was all reinforced with shatterproof film and the only entrance was retractable. There was an underground storage facility that held most of their food and water that could be accessed by hatch, and if absolutely necessary there was a steel tube that could be lowered through the floor of the cabin to dock with the hatch.

Two years of water for eight people and pets and five years of dehydrated food was stored underground and there was a rain catchment system as well as a detachable well pipeline. And if absolutely necessary they were next to a lake. They could live on fish and water for awhile. The roof housed solar panels and wind turbine generators. He’d wanted to build a second cabin for his parents with a retractable walkway, but that had never happened.

They never imagined they’d actually have to use it for the zombie apocalypse.

Andre and Michelle round the corner to where Connor is. Amanda has just arrived from the other side. They all look down at the body on the ground, waiting to see if it has any friends. Most zombies live dead the way they lived as people. Together. They tend to come and go in clumps.

They wait for about ten minutes, weapons drawn and on guard, but nothing happens.

“How’s dad?” Connor asks, noticing Andre’s outfit for the first time, laughing quietly and tipping his chin at the gun-toting spandex-clad friend of the family, who just shrugs and grins. Chris had broken his ankle running away from an unusually sneaky dead asshole while he was gathering wood for the woodburning stove they cooked with.

They save their power as much as possible for the things that kept them safe or sane. Laundry. There is a hand laundry system of rolling buckets and a wringer attached to the steel deck but once in awhile they use the pre-plague machines. When there’s enough laundry and the battery banks are full.

They entertain themselves with a once a week movie night. They eat popcorn with dehydrated butter powder and avoid all of Josh’s movies. They pick a song a day from one of their phones, which are nothing more than glorified mp3 players with some games and a camera. All cell service is long gone.

“He’s doing alright. He’s still refusing to take any painkillers because he wants to save them for ‘something important’ or if we are forced to travel. He’s being stubborn. The dogs are keeping him company.”

“He’s just lucky we have ice right now.”

Everyone nods. Their refrigerator cranks out a couple dozen cubes a day, and that is enough to keep the swelling and pain at bay for now. It’s early fall, and winter is coming. Then there would be plenty of ice, and hopefully enough sun to keep the hydro-solar heating system going. Otherwise they’d have to go out and chop wood. The plus side to cold weather? Frozen zombies. Or “zombiecicles” as Connor has started calling them. So the only worry will be keeping themselves alive and from being raided by other survivors.

Michelle has just finished that thought when something catches her eye. Something moving from the woods. “Hey,” she whispers and nods to the treeline. “Over there.”

They all freeze. It’s a strange sight. Five people, three inside something that resembles an old fashioned handcart, being pulled by a fourth and a fifth person. They are headed to the lake. The refugees haven’t spotted the cabin yet, or the eight foot barb wire chain link fence surrounding it. They’d put the fence up themselves after raiding a Home Depot for tools, cement and something to mix it in. The fencing itself had been in a storage shed on site, another precaution they hoped they’d never need, and hadn’t fully prepared to use.

Suddenly the people pulling the cart stop and point and drop the handles, one breaking into a run across the clearing to the fence.

“Hey! Hey! Are you guys alive up there?” His voice is hopeful, desperate.

They all look at one another. There are five of them. That would put them one over food and water maximum, leaving less provisions for them and for Josh if or when he makes his way cross country.

“Stay where you are!” Andre calls out and turns to the others. “Family meeting?” he whispers. “Who wants to keep an eye on them?”

“I vote no. No way. No strangers. Not until we know about Josh.” Amanda’s grief at losing her girlfriend on her way to the cabin is still an open wound. She’s angry and cold where she used to be warm. Her sense of sarcastic amusement has gone AWOL and she’s on emotional lockdown. “I’ll watch them.”

Michelle wraps an arm around her sister. “You come inside. Andre, you and Connor keep an eye on them. One of you keep regular watch. Find out anything you can from them. We’ll take the meeting in fifteen minute chunks until we’ve come to a vote everyone agrees on.”

Connor and Andre nod and take up their posts.

Michelle sends out a silent plea to god or the universe or whatever power there is that can get her son home safe to her. She hasn’t even entertained the notion yet that he might not make it.

 _Please_ , she asks the sky.  _Please bring my baby back to me_.


	4. | LA | OCT

He shakes me awake at midnight to switch watch shifts. It’s dark, and for a few seconds I have no idea where I am or who he is. My instincts kick in and I am out of the chair, knife drawn with him at arms length in less time than it takes for him to say my name twice.

 

Getting caught in the grasp of a dead one is worst case scenario. Muscles contract and force is applied with no regard for pain or injury, and once they have you in their grasp they pull and bite. Relentlessly. I’d once decapitated one who grabbed me out of nowhere, but not before it got a toothful of my quarter inch thick duct tape sleeves. The sleeves are hot as hell but they’ve saved me more times than I can even count.

Lesson learned: keep your limbs close to your body, and never take off your sleeves.

“Calm down!” He holds up his hands to show he is weaponless, his eyes wide. “It’s me, Josh. Remember?”

“You scared the fuck out of me.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I tried to wake you up without touching you but you were out cold.”

I crack my neck. “I haven’t slept like that in too long.” I feel strange. It’s not like me to trust someone so quickly. Or maybe I’m just that exhausted. He could be some kind of extra credit off the charts disturbed and he’s planning to skin me, waiting until after he wins me over. But I have a feeling that if he wanted to turn me over to Rapers or use me as an alternative food source he probably would have sprung the trap by now.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? I’ve got rice and beans and water.”

It’s been so long, I don’t even dare hope, but I ask anyway. “Is it hot?”

He grins at me in the thin light, pleased with my reaction. “Yep. I just made it.”

He disappears for a minute and returns, handing me a steaming bowl and a cup. I am entirely too excited by the thought of something warm in my belly and I force myself to breathe and take it slowly. “Thanks,” I nod as I settle back into my chair, legs crossed, hot bowl in hand.

We eat in silence. I am too tired to talk, too unused to it. I’ve completely forgotten how to make conversation anyway. Small talk. It seems so stupid now. So I’m relieved when he starts off the conversation.

“Why do you stay here? In the city?” he asks, puzzled.  

“Why not? Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere that’s safer. Not as populated.”

I shrug. I have reasons. But they’re mine. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. I grew up here. I’m familiar with it. And I don’t have anyone else. No other family. No friends outside the city. My life was pretty localized. I went to school, I went to work. I worked out. I had competitions. Everyone I knew was here. My family was very close.” He looks at me strangely. I know my voice is a wasteland. I say the words without feeling anything at all. I know they mean something to me, but I have shut that part of me down. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. “Why do you stay?”

“I’m sorry. About your family,” he says. He seems to really mean it. To really feel something. For me. I root around and try to find what I know I should feel, what I did feel, but I find only a smooth, seamless emptiness.

“I need to leave.” he says, not really an answer to my question but an answer nonetheless. Look forward, not back. I can respect it. I can work with it. For now. “I need to get out of here. My family is probably at our cabin in Kentucky. I need to get there. I need to see if they’re alive.”

We sit this way for awhile while I literally chew it over. “And you want me to come with you.”

“I need another person. I can’t do it by myself. I need someone to keep watch with. You just slept. You know how important sleep is.”

“I know. But you don’t even know me. Really. You don’t know what I can do. Or can’t do.”

“I know you’ve made it this far alone. That’s something.”  

It’s true. He knows about me what I know about him. We’re both exceptionally lucky, and we have some talent for survival. “You should get some sleep.”

He seems to sense that this is the best I can offer right now.

“Okay.” He gets up, then pauses. “I should show you around though, so you know where things are. Where the dishes go. Bathroom. Where the water is, if you need more. Where I’ll be sleeping.”

“Okay,” I grab my empty bowl and stand up. “Lead the way.”

—————-

In the morning the subject of Kentucky comes up again. He doesn’t seem to be able to leave it alone. It’s an itch, an ache that he has been fighting for however long. Longer than he’s comfortable with. And now my presence is dangling possibilities in front of him.

“We could take my bike,” he says over cold cereal without milk.

“You have one without training wheels?” I snark. Morning has never been my best time.

“You’re funny,” he smiles to himself.

“You’re not easy to scare,” I scowl. Part of me is annoyed about that, but then I allow a small smile to creep into the corner of my mouth.

“I knew you could smile,” he triumphs.

I resume scowling and kick him under the table.

“Okay! I’m scared of you. Don’t kick me.”

“Deal,” I grin.

We eat the rest of our breakfast in semi-comfortable silence. He alternates between stealing glances at me, puzzling openly at me, and moments of deep quiet that look like his brain is whirring away a million miles an hour.

“It never used to be this quiet,” I say softly, almost afraid to break it, to somehow call danger to us just by speaking in this moment.

“No. It didn’t,” he agrees. He looks me over long and hard. “I need your help, Roxie. I know we just met. I know I don’t know anything about you but I can feel, I can tell that you are not a bad person.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t. But I’m desperate. Besides, if you were a bad person you wouldn’t bother to warn me that you might be a bad person.”

I shrug. “I guess. But I don’t have feelings anymore. Not like I used to. It’s like I found the switch and I’ve turned them off and now the only thing I feel is fight or flight. Not even fear, not anymore.”

“That’s useful.” He cocks his head a little. “I haven’t found my switch yet.”

“It makes things easier. Much, much easier.”

“I can imagine.” He catches my eyes and holds them. It feels almost physical, his will. “I need your help. Just think about it. We can spend a little time getting to know each other, if you want. And if you don’t want to help, you can leave. You can leave now, if you want to.”

“I’m good. You have food. And I heard a rumor about a shower or something.”

“Yep.” He flashes a grin that makes me wonder what kinds of things he did and got away with pre-outbreak. “The rumors are true.”

——————————

The shower is bliss. It’s outside, but that doesn’t even matter. He’s rigged up a short hose with a sprayer head attached to a 50 gallon black barrel that’s suspended high enough that a person can stand under it. Or next to it. There’s even a curtain. The sound of the curtain closing triggers a pang of desire for the old days, for the luxury of steaming hot water. But this is good enough. It’s pretty warm, the black barrel attracts sunlight and does an entirely decent job of warming the water.

I strip down and rinse off, washing off a superficial layer of dirt and grime and gore. Then I shut off the water and soap up. He even has shampoo.

I have a flash of curiosity about whether or not he pulls the curtain when he’s here alone. The thought of him without clothes makes me feel a twinge in the cobwebbed corridors downstairs and I shiver slightly.

Being naked in the open yard, I feel exposed. But closing the curtain makes me feel vulnerable because I can’t see. I give in and open the curtain. I rinse the soap from my hair and body and towel off, slipping on a pair of borrowed pants and a shirt until I can clean my clothes. It’s only been a few weeks since I rinsed them out in the river but it feels like years. His clothes are clean and folded neatly and I raise the shirt to my nose and inhale deeply before I put it on. It smells like faint traces of soap. But it also smells like him. Another twinge. My skin prickles in the afternoon breeze and I slip on the white t-shirt quickly.

He’s watching me. He looks a little uncomfortable, leaning up against the wall, his feet crossed and his hands cupped nonchalantly over his crotch as I walk back in the house. I wonder if he was watching me the whole time. Not that it matters. It’s prudent of him to keep an eye on me, even if it did have…side effects. “Show me where the laundry gets done,” I request, my voice flat and dry.

—————————-

“If we’re going, we need gear. We need gas. We need food and water. We need a vehicle. Boy scout motto, right?” she asks.

I laugh. “I was never a boy scout.”

“Hmm. Well, I was never a girl scout.”

I take her to my old place. On a hill with walls and limited entry points, I can tell that she’s thinking that it’s perfectly defensible, and wondering why I left.

I look around at the place that used to make me so happy, bring me so much peace. “Welcome to the tree house.” Palpable sadness settles over me. I’m uncomfortable with sadness. I’ve always been able to shake off the negative before it gets to me too much. But this…it’s too much. Being here is bringing back so many memories, both amazing and terrible. The windows are broken and it’s been looted, and that makes me sad as well. I wonder what’s been taken. We don’t have time to look. There’s no room for sentimentality in this world.  

“What happened here? Why did you leave?” she asks. She knows something happened, I can’t hide what I’m feeling.

“Ummm. It was a friend. A girl. Not the sharpest crayon in the box, but she’s…she was nice. She was my friend. Since we were kids. She came here when they started the evacuations because she knew I was actually prepared for emergencies. And she trusted me.” I hear my voice tighten on the word “trusted” and I can’t bring myself to regain eye contact. “We were going to leave, we were ready to start out for Kentucky and she opened the garage door without checking and…boom. She was just gone. Not even a body, when it was all over. Just bloody streaks on the pavement. They dragged her away screaming. There was no way she survived it without being infected. I couldn’t do anything, it all happened so fucking fast. I had to close the door and defend myself. Three of them got inside.” I swallow hard. “I had to,” I repeat. I wonder who I’m trying to convince; myself, her, or both of us?

“I know.” She sits down on the curb outside the front door.

“I’ll never get her face out of my head. Screaming my name. When I do get any sleep it’s all I see.” I wake up paralyzed, unable to scream or speak or breathe, with her face still etched onto my retinas. I tap the side of my head angrily as if that might dislodge the offensive memory so I can burn it or smash it or however it is you kill those things. But it doesn’t come loose.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. There’s a resonance in her voice that I haven’t heard before. She’s been angry, and afraid, and annoyed with me. But that’s the full range of her emotions that I’ve seen. This is new. It’s just a fragment, but it’s clear and rich, like an echo of a former self bouncing up from somewhere deep and hidden.

“This was the first place I bought for myself. My first home. It was mine, you know? I earned it.”

“This isn’t home anymore, Josh.” She looks up at me and for a tiny sliver of a second I see a world of pain in her eyes. “This is hell.” Then the icy veneer slides back up over whatever it was I saw and she’s removed again. As distant as ever.

“Right. You’re right. I know. Let’s get my bike and go.”

She doesn’t argue, she just follows. I rummage through a drawer in the kitchen and find the keys. I grab some camping gear that hasn’t been stolen and stuff it into a backpack. A couple of camelbacks, some space blankets, a flashlight radio, a couple of mess kits. At least the flashlight will come in handy. “We’ll need to get some gas. I have gas cans. And a hose. Do you know how to siphon gas out of a newer car?”

“You have to follow the filler line underneath the car and physically remove the mechanism, but yeah. It’s usually just clamped on somewhere along the line. Or you can ice pick the tank itself.”

“Oh, good idea.” I run back into the kitchen and search quickly for the ice pick. I find it in the drawer next to the corkscrew and grab that as well. She looks at me like I’m crazy when I come back out. I shrug. “You never miss a corkscrew until you don’t have one.”

===========

We stop at a gas station on the way back to the house. He has a full tank plus a couple of gas cans that we bungee to the sides and the back but they leave less room for my legs than I’d like and I have to scoot up close to him just to be able to get my feet on the rests. He insists on me putting my arms around his waist. His chest is broad and his waist is solid and I am surprised that I feel very secure. Anchored. The balance is good and he knows how to drive. His hips are deceptively small and it’s easy to get my thighs up next to his. I feel a rush of heat and my thighs burn, my hands burn. I’m afraid he can feel it, even through our clothes. I try to think of something else but I only cool down a little.

It’s a long shot, but we stop at the station, just in case. I think I hear something, a car maybe. It could just be my mind playing tricks.

There’s no gas. Not surprising, but we had to try. We’re looking around for anything we can use when we see her.

A girl. She’s stumbling through the street toward us and I can’t tell at first glance if she is a dead one or not. But suddenly her eyes lock onto Josh through her thick dark hair and she starts mouthing his name. Dead ones don’t do that. That’s how we know them. The Speechless.

He runs out to her and pulls her into the store.

“Josh?” she chokes out dramatically.

“Vanessa?”

I don’t know who she is but I can tell one thing. She is trouble.

 

****


	5. | LA | OCT

“Vanessa? What are you…are you okay? How did you…are you hurt? Are you bitten?”

“No, no. I’m just so hungry and thirsty.” Her voice is high, like a little kid’s.  _That can’t be her real voice,_  I think. 

He pulls out his camelback tube and she sucks eagerly at it, batting her big brown cow eyes at him and jutting out her bottom lip. Something my father always used to say suddenly occurred to me.  _Nice landing strip for the flies, Roxie,_ he would say.

“How much do you guys have? I don’t want to drink it all but I’m sooooo thirsty.” I glance at him and he is clearly falling for it. I have no idea why that baby shit works on men.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I mumble under my breath. She shoots me a fraction of a second of venom, bitch mode set to full. It’s clear to me she’s as calculated as a Texas Instrument.

“We have—” he starts, and stops as I shake my head imperceptibly at him in warning.

“We have enough,” I declare firmly. “Josh can share what he likes with you but other than that we can’t do anything for you.”

“What? Why not? She’s exhausted and starving, obviously. Come on, Roxie.”

“Yeah, we all are.” I’m tired of this already.

Something about the way he talks. He knows her. Well. And something about the way she keeps glancing outside. Not just paranoia about dead ones. She yawns and raises her arm and my hand flies to my knife just as they swing in from the roof. Two fairly large and young men, and a tall lanky blonde ambling his way across the street.

Josh isn’t as quick to react as I am, but he does; and when he does surprise rings through his features before he grumbles out a name and his face gets hard and closed off.

“Austin.”

“Hey Josh. What’s up, man?” Vanessa scrambles to her feet and under this new person’s wing. He squeezes her possessively.

“How long have you been watching us?” I demand.

“Not very long. Just since you showed up at his house,” he nods at Josh. “I’ve had someone watching that place for a long time. Weeks. Almost gave up. But I figured if anyone was going to make it, it would be you, country boy. Then sadly, we swoop in and make use of all your hard work.” He eyes us. “You two seem awfully…close.”

“All of you know each other?” I ask, picking my fingernails with my knife. Austin gives me one of those looks. The you-don’t-recognize-me? look. I never recognize anyone. Even though I grew up here, I don’t (or didn’t) pay any attention to the Hollywood machine. I don’t need to escape reality. We didn’t own a TV. And I like reality just fine.

I was homeschooled. Sheltered, you could say, if you had to say. From most pop culture. I had my fill of self-important assholes early enough that I never wanted to give them even a single dime. I knew the unavoidably huge stars and the legends, Marilyn Monroe and Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. Ronald Reagan. Schwarzenegger. But the smaller players? Not so much. One time I met some guy named Matt something that started with D at work and all my friends freaked out. I know they made a movie about the Titanic. 

“Yeah. Austin and I go way back, don’t we, man?” Josh mimics his tone. “Vanessa and I are just friends.”  _Just._  That one word tells me all I need to know.

“Yeah!” she chirps, tilting her head at an odd angle. “Friends.”

“What do you want?” I hope my voice is conveying the casual deadliness I’m capable of dishing out. I won’t need much provocation.

“Just all your supplies. We’ll let you live. For now,” Austin grins.

“Boys?” Vanessa coos.

The two thugs from the roof obey, moving front and center. “Load up whatever they’ve got in the back,” Austin barks.

“You’ve changed.” Josh’s voice is hard and angry. “We used to be friends. I mean, I didn’t like what happened—” he gestures to include the three of them, excluding me. “—but I didn’t hate you or anything.”

“Look around, Josh. Everything has changed,” Austin cackles. He sounds un-fucking-hinged. He has that desperate wide-eyed glint and his voice cracks with near hysteria. “We’ve had to do some serious shit to survive. Haven’t you?” he demands. “Haven’t you had to kill kids and babies and old people along with everyone else? Had to make deals with testosterone amped assholes? Haven’t you had to take food and water from people who used to be your friends? To survive?” His face is getting red, his eyes and veins are popping and Vanessa looks like some kind of pet instead of a person, cowering behind him. I don’t even want to know what has happened to her to give her the look she has in her eyes.

“No.” Josh says simply. “I haven’t had to do that. I wouldn’t. Roxie here can take care of herself.” He nods at me. “You take whatever you want. We’ll be fine.”

I shoot him a look that I hope will make him change his mind right there. But it doesn’t. Doesn’t it occur to him that this guy could take the bike, then we’ll be screwed until we find something else to drive? “Can I have a word with you?” I don’t give a fuck if they give me permission or not, I drag him a few feet away by the arm, his face unreadable.

“They think we’re staying here,” he says flatly under his breath. “They think we have all our supplies in the store. We have to stop them before they kill us. And they will, once they realize we don’t have anything.”

“I thought you were ready to give it all away!” I’m still bitter and irritated, my adrenaline is still kicked up, and I’m not really processing what he’s saying completely.

“Wait until the hired help goes to the back.” His voice is so calm it is scary. “They’re a threat, Roxie. I have to get to my family. These guys are crazy. They’re gone. They might as well be—” he indicates the world at large, “you know. Infected. Zombies.”

“Yeah, well that’s the first thing you’ve said that I understand.”

“Don’t make this any harder, please.” His voice sounding human again. “Vanessa was…she’s really important to me.”

“You used to fuck.”

He glared at me. Hard.

“Yes. I loved her.”

“She didn’t love you.”

“No. Sort of. Maybe. In her way. I don’t know.”

“Well that should make it a little bit easier.”

“Kind of. I just need you to handle her. Please.”

“I can’t tell if you have problems killing women or just women you used to love.”

“Trust me, it’s both. And I don’t want to kill them. For the record, I have problems killing anyone.”

“If we knock them out or tie them up they’re as good as dead. They’re going to get eaten.”

“Shit,” he grumbles. “We could—”

He’s interrupted as Austin makes his impatience clear. “Hey! Lovebirds! Get the fuck back over—”

We turn around just in time to see the nearly fleshless hands break through the glass, grabbing Vanessa by the hair. She crashes backwards through the glass so fast, her arms flailing helplessly in its iron grip, trying to get a hold on the window but accomplishing nothing. Breaking off chunks of glass and shredding her hands.

“Help me! Austin! Josh!”

But there’s nothing we can do. It’s too quick. Nasty black teeth sink into her jugular before I can draw my free knife.

“Help me…” she whispers and her outstretched hand trembles as the teeth clamp down again, this time crushing her windpipe. I pull my blade and it finds its target in the top of the former human’s head. But it’s too late. I step out to retrieve my knife and she whispers something I can’t hear. I try to get closer, but the light goes out in her eyes and she’s gone, blood pumping from her throat like a fountain.

“Roxie!” Josh calls to me. “We’ve got company! Behind you!”

I turn to see a small crowd shuffling its way towards us and I hear a scramble of broken glass and turn to see Austin and his pals running off toward an SUV parked beside the station. That’s how they’ve survived. They run like fucking rats when things get sticky. Not how I do things. I’d bet water they pimped out Vanessa to the local gangs in exchange for safe passage.

She starts to stir, limbs twitching, eyes fluttering under the lids. Starts to turn into whatever they are.

I stick my knife in her brain and her skull cracks like a melon. Josh makes a sound I never want to hear again.

“Stay,” I command.

Nope. Running is not how I do things.

————————-

I’ve never seen anything like her and I’ve done some serious stunt and wire work in the past. Trained for all kinds of things. But this one. If this was a movie there would be a slow motion shot of her with a build up, something hard or dubstep maybe, cut to my dopey ass face, staring, unable to take my eyes off of her. Then at the drop, her kicking some serious ass at normal speed. But this isn’t a movie and there’s a fucking zombie coming at me. Normal speed.

She swings around in an impossibly fast and balletic move and knifes it right between the eyes before it reaches me.

“Josh! Snap out of it!” she screams at me and I am yanked back to the moment. I hear ribs snap as I front kick one of them in the solar plexus, then move in to take its head off with my machete.

At the sound of breaking bone, the thing behind it cocks its head only to have it knocked halfway off its shoulders a second later as she swings the tire iron she just picked up. I have the machete, but I just got it and I’m not quite comfortable with it yet.

We don’t have time to catch our breath, let alone our thoughts as five, seven, ten dead ones catch sight of us and start to climb through the broken glass.

Then we’re in the fight and time does that thing where you can never seem to move fast enough. And she still seems to be going at light speed. I watch her spin kick two of them in the head, knocking one decaying glob of bony flesh off its bent stem of a neck with the blade of her foot before she deftly switches legs and kicks the other one in the stomach to get out of his arms’ reach before stabbing it in the skull. Her knife is on a tether to her wrist so after she makes the strike she doesn’t even look, her focus is on to the next target as she snaps her wrist and pops the knife out, taking part of the skull with it as it flies back into her waiting hand.

She’s taking down twice as many as I am and I am not that fucking slow. I falter once and she reaches out instinctively, breaking an arm just as it latches onto mine. Then she’s on to the next.

I glance outside and I see her on the ground. Vanessa. For a second it feels like someone has sucked all the air out of my lungs. I can’t think about her now.

Roxie is here. Alive. And in need of assistance. Well, probably not. But I tell myself she is and dive back in.

When it’s all done we’re panting and covered in black ooze and we smell like shit but I have to shake my leg out and adjust my pants, tucking away my reaction to her cat-quick body that is growing its way across my hip.

“That was impressive.” I say, my voice cracking.

She rolls her eyes at me and wipes her knife across her thigh, which does not help my situation below the belt. “Yeah. Thanks.” She grabs our gear and starts to walk quickly for the bike. “Are you coming?” she shoots back at me. Annoyed.

“Oh. Yeah.” I shake my head and jog to catch up. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Do what? The kicking? Or the killing?”

“The kicking.” I have a pretty good idea what it takes to do the killing.

“I have two black belts.” She shrugs like she just told me how she likes her eggs cooked. “Let’s hurry and get back. I feel like I need a shower all of a sudden.” I feel that painful and familiar ache surge as she straddles the passenger seat.

I turn my back to her, climb on, careful not to kick her, and start up the bike. The growl of the engine gets me right in that spot behind my balls and I groan in frustration. She appears (uninvited but not exactly unwelcome) in my head, naked and dripping wet, her dusky nipples tight little pebbles tipping her trembling breasts as she shakes her hair under my makeshift shower. I have to wipe the image from my head or I will actually blow my load right there. Damn. It’s been too long. I’m like a fucking kid again in awkward bonerland.

“You okay?” she sighs impatiently and shakes my shoulder a little. Her touch doesn’t help. At all. She probably thinks I’m being an asshole or a pussy.

“Yeah. Fine. Let’s go.”

Just to ice the fucking cake she snags my machete and takes the head off a lunger on the way out of the parking lot.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat as she is forced to sit closer than a usual passenger because of the gas cans. There has to be a better solution, one that won’t leave me with a seriously epic case of blue balls. I can think of one. Just acknowledging that her fingers are mere inches from my dick, her thighs clamped around my hips…stop, Josh. I have to stop. I drive us back to the house, repeatedly warning myself to keep my eye on the road, to sweep the street as I’m driving. This is not okay. I’m too distracted.

And distracted equals dead.

 

 


	6. | KY | SEPT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  


 

  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. | LA | OCT

He avoids me for a few days. It’s understandable. I did kill his ex-girlfriend. Sort of.

I give him space, but when he starts to oversleep and miss things I decide it’s time to have a chat. It’s early evening, and it’s his turn to take watch and he’s still in bed.

“What’s up, dude?” I plop down next to him on the blanket, making as much noise and movement as I can. I smack him firmly on the ass and he yelps in surprise. 

He grumbles something at me and pulls the covers over his head and turns away.

“Come on, Josh. We’re going soon, right? Snap out of it. Let’s get on the road.”

There’s a soft grunt from under the blanket and then nothing else.

“Listen. I’m sorry. About her. You know I had no choice.” I try to sound like I mean it. And I do, but I can’t make the feeling big enough to be able to hear it in my voice. Maybe he can still tell.

“I know.”

“Then what’s going on? You haven’t said two words to me in two days.”

“I’m just tired. I need sleep.”

“No, no you don’t. You need to get your ass out of bed and get ready to get on the road or I’m out of here.”

Now I have his attention. He pulls the blanket off and stares at me.

“What?”

“You heard me. Get out of bed or you’re back on your own.”

He gives me a hard glare. “Fine. Give me a few minutes.”

“No, I think I’ll just stay here until you’re up.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Unless you want to talk or something.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“It’ll help.”

“Really? Will it? Will it help if I tell you about all my friends that are gone now and how much easier life used to be and that I  _miss_  it? That I miss  _them_?” His voice cracks hard.

“I don’t know. Do you feel better?”

He looks down at his hands, picking at his nails. “Yeah. I guess.”

“You wanna tell me about it?”

He talks for a long time. About what he used to do, about being famous, about how things were finally really taking off for him when the world just fell apart. I should have known. He and his ‘friends’ are ridiculously attractive. And that look that Austin gave me. The surprise when I didn’t know who he was.

Everything Josh knew was based on having an audience and a fiercely loved group of friends and family. Without that, without his family to anchor him, he is going to start to come apart. Sooner rather than later. It really is time for us to get on with things and get on the road.

“What do you miss?” he asks when he’s done with a rant about paparazzi and how he still looks for them, still sometimes wants to believe that this is all just a massive and unprecedentedly elaborate episode of Punk’d.

“Oh… I don’t want to do this.”

“It’s just… it’s just been a long time since I’ve talked to anyone. I miss talking to people. Come on. I told  _you_.”

“What I really miss? I miss chocolate. And real hot showers. My family. Little things. Soft pretzels. EZ cheez. Music. My vibrator.”

He chokes back a laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay. It’s fine. It was just a stress release that I miss. You know. I guess it’s simpler for guys. I raided a sporting goods store for one of those pee standing up plastic things as soon as I could. And then after I came across a rape gang, a pharmacy for some morning after pill and birth control. I have a couple of years worth. And we have roughly two years before all the condoms in the world expire.”

“Shit. I didn’t even think about half of that stuff. You’re only the second or yeah, the third female I’ve run into in over a month.” He grins and nods to a decent sized cardboard box by the bed. “Good thing I stocked up on condoms anyway. Always be prepared.”

“Or hopeful,” I grin back. “Well you’re only the second person I’ve even talked to since — you know. Since people stopped talking.”

“I miss getting really drunk. Like, so drunk you don’t have to know where you are, or what your name is. I miss not having to be constantly aware.”

“Oh, I miss that too. I have a bottle of vodka, but I usually just use it for sterilization.”

“I have a bottle of whiskey that I’ve been saving.”

“Maybe we should make good use of it.”

“Yolo,” he says with a bitter laugh.

Half an hour later we are sitting in the dark, passing a bottle back and forth.

It all starts off innocently enough. Well, probably not. Not really. Neither of us are innocent. Definitely not anymore.

“I think I’m dru—” I start to say, stumbling back from our makeshift restroom when I am pinned to the wall by his hips, his hands on either side of my head, his mouth on mine like a starving man who has wandered into an unattended feast.

His kiss is hard and hungry. His lips are nimble and his tongue wide and slick, parting my lips along their full length in one swipe, flicking and seeking whatever thing he needs. He searches my mouth, pausing to discover and engage my own confused but responsive tongue. I seek something from his mouth as well, and whatever it is I need it, but I can’t want it. I don’t know what to do with my hands as the flutter like birds at my side, not wanting to touch him, afraid of what giving myself permission to touch him will bring.

I’ve never been kissed like this before. There is a sudden swell in my chest and I pull back abruptly. I don’t want to be kissed like this.

I turn my head and bare my neck to him and he grabs my hands, pinning them above my head with one hand, his fingers working our belts and zippers as his teeth graze my collarbone and his lips consume my skin.

“What the fuck are you doing, Josh?” I demand.

“What the fuck do you think?” he laughs. “We need to blow off some steam.”

He leans in to kiss me again and I turn my head. Again.

“You don’t want to kiss me?” He challenges, his voice a low feral growl.

“No.” He doesn’t give me a chance to explain, his lips keen for mine.

“Fuck. Josh. Don’t push it. You can fuck me. Just don’t fucking kiss me.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Pouting.

“Fine,” he huffs as he returns his attention to his one handed attempt at unfastening anything he can get his hand on. “Can I let go of your hands?”

“Maybe. You afraid to be overpowered by a girl?”

“You should try it and see,” he growls. But he lets go of my hands.

He dives back into my neck, his hands rough and roaming, squeezing one of my breasts, kneading it not so gently under my shirt. I let myself explore his back, all the knots and bones. He’s sinewy and tight and broad with muscles like thick rope. A tingling sensation spreads through my body as I hold on tighter and let myself go.

“I want you so much,” he whisper/growls, and I am on fire. His hands are just as hot and wet as his tongue as the three of them push and pull at me until it feel like all hell is breaking loose between my legs. Fire, brimstone, lava. I need him. Now.

I throw a leg up around his waist and he responds with a sound that is almost inhuman and a hard push against the wall. I feel the give of my soft tissue as he presses his erection into my belly. I feel bone against bone and a radiating sensation up through me as his hips grind into mine and the base of his cock vexes and swells hard as stone against my pubic bone.

I have no intention of giving him the satisfaction of me begging for it, but I am getting sorely tempted. I feel the aching emptiness and I know exactly what it wants. I slide my hand down the inside of his pants, palm side to his skin and hair until the tips of my fingers hit my target. I wrap my hand around his shaft and tug firmly up along it’s length until I reach the swollen plum of the tip. My touch is insistent, I buck against him putting pressure on my own hand, pulling his hips to mine with my leg, my calf digging into his backside.

He throws his head back and hisses. “Fuck!” He picks me up, his hands palming my ass, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders, his mouth storming whatever is left of the uncharted territory of my neck and ears and jaw and collarbone. He throws me down on the bed and I bounce and laugh, pulling off my clothes as he crawls toward me on all fours, his eyes blazing.

“You’re going to get it now, girl.” His voice is so thick with lust and need that I don’t even bother to respond, I just hold his gaze as I shed the rest of my clothes. Whatever  _it_  is, I think I can take it. He crawls all the way up until our faces are almost touching, until our foreheads are bumped up against each other, locked in the fierceness of our need, of the moment. I am afraid he is going to try and kiss me again and I swear I hear a deep and angry rumble like a large and predatory animal coming from the chasms of his broad chest, but it could just be my imagination.

“Spread your legs,” he commands with quiet forcefulness. I do it as he fumbles with his pants, shoving them quickly down around the thick muscles of his thighs. I feel exposed for just a second as he gets up on his knees to remove his shirt. He bites the insides of his cheeks and wets his lips with his tongue, nothing but the air and his eyes between my legs. His fingers trace and dip into my crease from the bottom to the top, wetting his fingers, his cock bobbing. He groans hard and his eyes roll back in his head a little as he smoothes some of the wetness onto his head, which is already beaded with precum. I reach over and pull a condom out of the box next to the mattress and hand it to him. He rips it open with his teeth and rolls it on quickly with a practiced hand and then he’s back on top of me, thrusting into me all the way in, as far as he can go.

“Shit, Roxie. That feels so…oooohh, god. Don’t move for a second.”

I grin as he struggles to control himself, as he trembles on top of me, his eyes squeezed shut, his breath deliberately slow and deep. Then without warning he is pumping into me with abandon and an electric fire shoots up from my clit through my belly and my breasts until I can feel it in my teeth. I can feel the crescendo climbing. It’s been so long since I felt this way, even before the outbreak.

“Me too,” he whispers and I realize I had said that last thing out loud. It’s a bad habit from spending time alone, conversing with myself without realizing it.

“Are you…are you almost there?” His words are short and heavy. He’s propped up on one hand with his other holding my hip steady as he pushes into me again and again and again and I don’t even have time to answer, my body answers for me as I hit the edge and float in slow motion, suspended as I squeeze and pulse around him, my breath caught in my lungs like a moth against a light bulb. His lips form a drawn bow, the hollows of his cheeks flush and mottle red as he executes a few more almost involuntary thrusts and bares his teeth at me and then he is gone, unwound and shattered but contained inside of me, panting and spasming and squeezing my hip so hard I know it’s going to bruise but I don’t fucking care.

“Shit,” he exhales. “That felt good.” And he collapses onto me in a sweaty heap, our limbs and parts tangled to the point where I don’t know whose what is where. We are a pile of spent lust and grief and frustration and I don’t want to admit how good it does feel. All of it. Even this. Especially this. The sloppy, hot, careless mess left in the aftermath, our skin stuck together with sweat and dirt, our hearts beating hard against our chests like trapped animals.

Caged and untamed.

 

 


	8. | LA | OCT

Fuck, she’s beautiful. She doesn’t even know, she doesn’t even care. I roll off of the bed and stand up, turning my back as I snap off the condom and toss it into the bin by the door.

“Where are you going?” Her voice is low and dusky and I want so badly to crawl back into bed with her and do what we just did until morning or we can’t walk, whichever comes first. But I don’t want her to think that I’m taking advantage of her. She didn’t reject me, but I don’t know what she’d do if I made another move. I don’t know why she didn’t like kissing me. Am I that out of practice? I don’t think so. 

“I have watch, right?” I shrug and yank my jeans up over my hips, turning to look at her as I button the fly. 

“So you’re just going to fuck and run on me?” 

What?! “What? No! I just…” 

“Don’t just stand there, half dressed with your fly half buttoned. The choice is yours.” She pats the bed next to her and bites her lip coyly. “Are you really going to spend what could be our last night of relative safety by yourself in the other room?" Her smile looks innocent but it's anything but. "I’ll keep you awake.” 

I laugh and jump onto the bed, tucking my head into her bare chest as she runs her strong, slender fingers through my hair. I don't know if I can handle this. But maybe she’ll let me handle her for a little while.

She does. 

————————

We leave a couple of days later when Austin’s friends decide to knock on the door at 4 AM. With guns. Luckily we were ready to go, we’d planned on leaving at daybreak. We grab a few essentials from the kitchen and let them go around the front while we duck out the back. The streets are pretty empty, despite that it’s still dark out and the bike proves once again to be much more maneuverable in the maze of stalled traffic than we could have hoped. 

“Is there anything you need to do? Before we go?” he stops and asks me at a stoplight that hasn’t worked for months. 

I take him to the only place in town where I know the dead stay dead. The cemetery.

I lead him through the labyrinth of old tombstones to the newer section, the one where  _he_  is.

We stand like shadows over the grave, and I feel nothing. 

At first. Slowly, over a few minutes I feel a pressure building in my ears, my jaw clenches and my chest constricts. My eyes prickle. I rub them and am surprised to find wetness, then just acknowledging I’m capable of crying pops the floodgates. So many tears. He puts his arm around me and pulls me in but I lose my legs and I slip out of his arms and onto my knees. I cover my mouth with both my hands to keep from screaming as the full weight of my displaced grief hits me like a sledgehammer strapped to the front of a freight train. He kneels down beside me but doesn’t touch me again, unsure of how to comfort me, unsure of how to help me, unsure if I’ll kick his ass if he tries. 

I try to be quiet, it’s barely dawn but I don’t want to draw attention. But it must be a sight. Me, reduced to a soundlessly sobbing, leaking, squeaky mess on my baby brother’s grave. 

Somehow he seems more dead to me than the others. Because it’s here when they lowered the coffin. Here where I sat with my mother all night, weaving rosemary wreaths from sprigs I’d cut earlier from the bushes at our house. It wasn’t until the sprinklers came on automatically in the morning that she agreed to leave.

She’d lost someone from every generation in her life. Her father, her sister, and then her son. I grew up with a legacy of grief, knowing the way a person can miss another person so much that it bleeds into every other part of their life. I didn’t want it. I rejected it with both hands, both feet and a firm choke hold. 

But I miss my brother. I regret not being there when he decided to end his own life. I regret not answering the phone because I was getting ready for a night shift at the restaurant and I always had to mentally prepare to be around strangers.

It isn’t like I don’t like people. It’s just that it takes all my energy just to be around them. Or at least it used to. Now I have all the time in the universe and I don’t have to be polite, or make small talk.

Although I have gotten into a bad habit of mumbling to myself. I never noticed until there was another person here to listen to my externalized internal monologue. I’d be washing dishes or getting something ready and Josh would say “What?” and I kicked myself.

Now that we’re leaving, and I am leaving behind the only thing I feel connected to in this world, I feel cracked, right down the middle. My brother is gone. One month before the outbreak started. Then after, my parents are gone. My grandmother, my cousins, everyone I knew and loved dearly and deeply is gone. 

I crawl over to him and like a kitten I curl up in his lap while he reassures me the best that he can. He backs us up against the headstone for cover and gets out the Glock with the silencer, keeping it leveled at the horizon with his right hand while he strokes my back with his left. He asks me questions. What was he like? He was smart and sweet and sad. What did he like to do? He liked to skateboard and be silly and listen to music and play video games and chess and he would sneak off and get drunk with his friends, just like a normal fourteen year old. Until the things that people at school and church and life said wore him down. Until one day he couldn’t do it anymore. And the sadness took him. 

Eventually my sobs run dry, and I’m aware of where I am (in his lap), how close our bodies are. I stroke his arm, his chest, his thigh. Another need is making itself known; and it is hungry, angry, and strong. I need to be closer to another live human being. Right now.

I stand up and take his hand and find a wall that’s out of the way. I pull him close, rubbing my hand between us, feeling out the thing that I want. He gets hard almost immediately.

“Put it in me,” I whisper, my teeth on the lobe of his ear. I nibble softly then bite down harder and he hisses into my hair. “Please.” 

“Okay, okay. Easy, baby.” He takes my face in his hands and forces me to look at him, his pupils filling up the space, nudging his green and gold irises out of the way. He doesn’t blink for a long, long moment and I feel like he’s drilling into me, eye fucking me slowly before we even start to take off our clothes. His eyes shift back and forth between mine and I can’t look away. I’m caught. Now that I’ve asked for it I have no chance of getting away without getting something else first.

It’s dangerous to take off our pants here, we could end up running for our lives naked from the waist down. But right now it seems like an acceptable risk. I reach between us and undo my pants, slipping them down quickly, over my boots, leaving those and my underwear. It’s an acceptable risk but I’m not stupid. He pushes them aside as he reaches out to finger me, to see if I’m ready.

Satisfied, he drops his own pants and lowers the waistband of his underwear. It’s the first time I’ve seen his cock in the light of day and I’m not disappointed. Not that I would care if it was orange and polka dotted. It feels so right. He fishes a condom out of his pocket and makes quick work of it. I’m mesmerized.

He lifts me up and I feel weightless with his hands wrapped around the tops of my ribs, until my elbows are propped up on his shoulders, back against the wall. He eases his hold and I slide down his chest, my thighs levering on the apex of his hip bones. He reaches under me and lines himself up just in time as I slip down onto his cock and my name flies from his throat. 

“Shhhh,” I whisper, looking around behind us. 

“You could shut me up with a kiss,” he whispers back as he hands me the gun, my turn to watch his back. 

“In your dreams.” 

“I do dream about that kiss,” he says and my lungs freeze up. He bites back a grin and the force returns in his gaze and his grip as he pins me hard and thrusts into me, ducking his head, his teeth digging into my shoulder, containing his voice. He squeezes my ass with both hands and I dig my fingers into his hair, holding his head to me and wrap my legs tighter around his waist, changing the angle slightly and ohhh, now it’s just right. I can feel the rim of his glans slide up and catch against that spot with every angry thrust and then I’m on the edge and he knows it. He changes his stroke again just slightly but just enough and now I’m crashing, breaking, undone. I ride out the sensations and I can feel him swell and harden inside and I know he’s so close and I squeeze him a little, clamping my walls down on him. His mouth pops off my shoulder and his cheeks flush and he loses all rhythm, jerking and flexing as he finishes. His eyes are back on mine, willing me to know what he’s feeling.

He holds me there for just a moment longer until I realize my boots are digging into his back painfully and the wall is starting to dig into mine. I unwrap myself from him and slip my jeans back on quickly. He pulls off the condom and tosses it in the bushes, shrugging at me. I used to hate littering. But now it is so far down on my list of things that bother me (just above coffee that isn’t hot enough but below getting black congealed zombie blood stains out of my clothes).

He pulls his pants back up and something hits me and it’s too fast, my legs are too weak from what we just did and my reflexes are slow from the hormones pumping through my blood. But he’s got it. He heard the moan and his knife is already out and it must be the adrenaline, because he's moving quick and lethal like a wolf and is at the moaner’s throat in what seems like less time than it’s taken me to understand what’s happening. I can’t afford this. I can’t let myself feel like this again. I pull on my pants and we walk silent and fast back to the street.

  
“I don’t want to talk about this again. Any of it. Ever,” I say quietly as I sling the pack onto my shoulders and wait for him to get on the bike first. 

“Okay Rox,” he says gently as he passes me, but it doesn’t stop him from taking my hand for a second and giving it a small squeeze before he pulls it toward him and I swing my leg over the bike to join him. The gas cans don’t bother us so much anymore I think as I wrap my arms around his waist, feel the sturdy curves and sinews of his back against my chest, even through his leather jacket.  _For safety_ , I tell myself. 

We don’t say anything else until Vegas. I’ve said my goodbyes. There’s nothing left for me in LA but death and an empty shell.


	9. KY/RIO/CO | JUNE

**CONNOR | KY**

 

  


  
We spotted the old pickup truck on a Tuesday. I know it was a Tuesday because I’m being really anal about keeping track of what day it is. If we lose track, it will take an astronomical amount of effort to figure it out again. And I mean that literally. We have a set of hardcover encyclopedias, but the internet is gone and none of us really have the knowledge of astronomy to make it a small task. 

So every day I check off the day on my calendar, as well as keeping track of the date on the activity log. It just seems easier that way. It might seem stupid to keep an antiquated system, but it is the standard and based on astronomical time tables. Nothing is stable, but in the grand scheme of the universe, we’re not even a blip on the radar. Not even the shadow of a shadow of a blip. 

Kind of puts things in perspective. 

So when the truck arrives Wednesday night, we’re not really that surprised. We’re ready. We’ve practiced and tried to train for this, but we haven’t had to deal with raiders before. 

When the noobs showed up (that’s my nickname for the marine and his wife and the hippie and her kid), we didn’t debate it because the biters followed shortly after and they needed help. With our resources we have enough to get by for a few years at capacity, and capacity was always meant to include Josh. So when the new numbers put us there, there were a lot of late night conversations in mom and dad’s room. 

We made it clear from the beginning that they were not permanent guests, that we were expecting (hoping) for at least one more. The marine and his wife were on a mission to find their son (an option we’d all considered, but we weren’t all quite there yet, but mom was) and they made it clear that they were never intending to stay, they just needed some supplies if we could spare them. The girl and her mother are a different story. And they're still here. 

\-------------

“So...” Terra ventures, “how old are you?” We're playing a game of Apples to Apples on the sofa, cards on the coffee table. 

“Too old for you,” I bump her shoulder with mine. “Twenty. How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” she pouts. “But people say I’m an ‘old soul.’ My mom says she has had past life regressions and that our souls always somehow end up together. It’s all bullshit. Unless I was her mother in my last life which explains how I feel about her right now.”

“You never know,” I laugh.

“Yeah, right. Tell me you believe in that shit.”

“It’s not scientifically probable, so no, I don’t. But you can’t rule anything out. Like zombies.”

“Uh huh,” she huffs. “I’m pretty sure that can be scientifically explained. We heard a lot of conspiracy theories from my mom’s hippie friends. The government. The usual. I didn’t believe any of it until it started to happen.”

“Seriously? How did they let you in on those discussions?”

She grins like a cat. No question she has had to deal with things far beyond her years. 

“So where did you guys live? Before?” I ask. 

“All over. My mom is always on some kind of quest to find 'herself’ and ‘true love.’ I think she’s full of shit most of the time. We’ve moved like, ten times in the last five years. Lived with a bunch of guys. I usually have to sleep on the sofa. Sometimes we camp. Sometimes we were at gatherings.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool. I can handle it, I just don’t like it.” 

\----------------

Mom warns me that Terra has a crush on me and now that I’m over eighteen, and even though there is no law to speak of anymore, she makes it clear that hitting on a fifteen year old was and is not okay. I can’t say that I didn’t think about it, because let’s face it, options are short and anyone who can take out a zombie like she can has probably passed an emotional maturity milestone early. Plus fourteen is legal in Canada and Mexico. But that’s a point that mom does not take the way I intend. Something like  _YOU WILL NOT BRING ANOTHER PERSON INTO THIS WORLD, CONNOR MASON HUTCHERSON. No sex is 100% safe_. Like I’m stupid and don’t know that. Only Amanda hears me say  _anal is_ , and her muffled snort is very satisfactory, but when it comes to the will of my mother, there is almost no force that can contend with it. Josh won’t admit it, but he owes a lot of his success to her. Her willingness to get him out there, to make sure he had all the opportunities possible. Of course he made the rest happen. Not that it didn’t go to his head. Because it totally did. But I love him anyway and I want him here with us, where he belongs. 

But I’d still never act on it. I have feelings for her but it’s a general amusement (she is kind of hilarious) and yeah, okay, I like her. As a person. She’s practical and she talks like someone much older. She’s smart as shit with a natural curiosity and knows everything from obscure pop culture references to science and no one else plays board games with me anymore either. But no one will let me forget how old she  _actually_  is. And I won’t. I’m not a creep. 

But Amanda likes to leave post its in my bathroom.   
  


 

And when the truck shows up, even though she protests, we make Terra stay inside. We crank the walls closed, leaving just enough room for us to get back in, single file, if we have to.

 

 

They storm the fence, using a truck to try to uproot or break the fence. When they can't, they get out with the wire cutting shears, leaving themselves vulnerable to gunfire. Mom takes the shot. She's our best shot. Her warning is one bullet to the right arm of the guy working the shears. The next shot she takes is not so kind. The message is clear. We are armed and willing, we will fuck you up.

 

  
_We should have shot out the tires and killed them all_ , I mumble under my breath. But there is someone familiar among them. Someone we used to know very well. I thought she'd made her life in LA, attempting to get a singing career on the back of my brother. But here she is. Possibly doing the same as Andre, just visiting for the weekend, stuck in Kentucky for the long haul. I wish again that Josh had wanted to be here for the party.

 

**DR EMIL EDWARDS | RIO/DENVER**

In June 2016 I was called in by the CDC to retrieve viable samples from a remote location. Standard investigation. I was to go to Rio de Janiero, to the favela which apparently was lit up like a Christmas tree with some kind of infection that was causing people to lose everything but base brain function.

When I arrived, it was like something out of a first person shooter game. The local military had set up a perimeter at the base of the hill and was actively gunning down anyone moving. I went in with a radio wearing my very visible bright yellow biohazard suit. They promised not to shoot me, as long as I regularly broadcast my position. They gave me one guard. The mandatory bribe and the fact that I was looking for answers and had the US government behind me hopefully ensured my survival. 

I found them slumped up against a wall around the corner. A mother and baby, normal temps, no sign of infection. None of the telltale green skin and open wounds. She was praying. Holding her child and praying, in the shadow of the Cristo Redentor.

 

  


I radioed back that I had uninfected survivors, and that I was going to need the COD* and full decon kit. The pilot was not to notify anyone of the nature of the samples I was carrying. Just that I would need to transport them straight back to Denver, and I’d need a customs bypass order. Authorization SAP** Burning Fraction.

These programs never had names that had anything to do with what they were about. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes they were not. This one amused me. But it was really the only thing amusing about it, I thought, as I loaded Mariana and ten month old Luiz along with several cases of spinal, brain, organ and muscle tissue samples taken from deceased subjects into the notoriously uncomfortable aircraft, as well as one nearly intact (except for the bite mark and the bullet through the skull) cadaver.

Buckle up, I told her. And welcome to America.

*COD = Carrier Onboard Delivery, the nickname for a C2 Greyhound. Can make tight landings and take offs, commonly on aircraft carriers. Cargo/passenger capabilities. Navy.

  


**SAP = Special Access Program


	10. LV | OCT

I used to like coming to Vegas. A free weekend, a few of my boys, hotel rooms, some private entertainment, a couple of nondisclosure agreements, good to go. Now it’s a wasteland. A sin city that was never meant to be. It’s a bad idea to go through town but we need food and rest for the night. We decide to get through it first though, find something on the other side of I-15. Vegas has a few suburbs, but not as many as LA or another heavily populated area. We siphoned some old trucks and refilled the gas cans in Barstow but we didn’t stay long enough to do anything but drink some water and pee on some bushes. We snagged a few protein bars from a gas station but we haven’t eaten anything other than that since last night. 

Last night. This morning. It’s all a blur at this point. 

She’s a blur.

I have no idea what it would be like if I’d lost Connor a month before everything else. She lost her entire family. I can’t think about it, because I still have to have hope that the cabin has held out as a defensible post for mine. It was certainly designed to be. But things don’t always go as planned. Life doesn’t go as planned.

Things broke down pretty quickly. First TV, then phones, then the internet, then electricity and water went. Then the attacks started, and escalated so fast. It all happened so quickly that no one had a chance to do anything. I called my mom to tell her I was evacuating with everyone else and she was happy. I got an email from Connor telling me they had made it to the cabin, that Andre was with them. No one knew about Amanda. But then my friend showed up, and things got delayed, and then I was alone. 

I can’t imagine losing what she has and still being able to function. She is incredible. I don’t know how long she’s been holding off feeling anything, but from the way she broke down, it’s probably been at least as long as she’s been fighting. She’s fighting to hang on, she’s fighting herself. She wants me to think that she’s unbreakable and maybe on the outside that’s true, but she’s just the opposite on the inside. 

So I’m gentle with her, hopefully without letting her know that I am. She’ll know, and she’ll think that I think she’s weak, even though I think she’s anything but. I know what it takes to just live these days. 

We hit traffic right outside of Vegas. And by traffic I mean a labyrinth of stalled cars, doors open, bodies, body parts, and entrails trailing. Once in awhile we’ll get movement and we either evade or attack. We develop a system of hand squeezes to decide what to do. The bike is loud. One disadvantage. One squeeze is evade. Two is drive by and behead. Three is stop and defend. 

——————

He’s been quiet, since the cemetery. I know he knows when i said i didn’t want to talk about it ever, I didn’t mean I want to live as a mute. But now he’s unsure of how to deal with me. Hesitant. Tentative. He thinks I’m broken. 

We need some fun.

What better place than Vegas? 

But it doesn’t look fun. It’s daylight but even now you can tell that everything is dead. There’s no flashing or blinking or tacky shine. Even the billboards already look faded and worn away, the electronic ones giving us only their flat blank faces. What we need is a secure spot to spend the night. We picked up water and food in Barstow. We only need a bed. 

We pass a strip mall on the way out of town. I scan for movement, but out of boredom I also tick off the types of stores. Pizza, dental office, specialty grocery, chinese, tattoos, costume shop, thrift store, adult novelty store… it’s that part of town. Only in Vegas would there be enough of a market for a year round costume shop. 

I tap him on the shoulder. “Turn around!” I yell into his helmet. 

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Just turn around! Pull in over there.” 

He grumbles, but he does it. He likes to have explanations before he makes decisions. 

It’s a manic idea, and I can feel a kind of excited energy rising like a bubble in my stomach, and it’s going to pop, and whatever feeling or feelings are in there are going to require privacy and probably some alcohol. 

Dammit. Since we met I’ve been a mess. I don’t like it. I don’t like the feelings. I wish I could turn them down, dial them back like I used to. Swallow them. But years and years of swallowing my feelings for people who will never know them now is making me shaky with an energy I’ve never felt before. I want to smash things just to smash them. I want to fuck shit up. I want to cause some destruction. Picking a fight with a zombie herd is probably not the best idea, but it’s what I feel like doing. If I were by myself I’d do it. I don’t give a fuck anymore. 

But I’ll get Josh to Kentucky like I promised. I feel a cold sense of finality, now. Cold, clear rage. I don’t know who or what I feel it towards, but I have to spend some of it or I’m going to lose my grip on everything. What I really want is to throw him down on the nearest mattress and fuck until we can’t walk. That would do it. So to speak. But it’s not very practical, and I don’t know if I can ask him to do that right now. He’s been driving for hours. He needs rest. We’re on the edge of town, and I think if we can find a nice secure room in the strip mall, we can make it through the night. 

I hope. 

We set up our defenses in a walk in refrigerator, in one of the restaurants. It’s completely empty, even the shelves and racks are gone. It has a roof hatch to access the compressor, so if we have to, we can get out that way. We pull a ladder in and get out the space blankets. Then we head to the thrift store to see if there are any blankets, or even just a bunch of clothes that we can throw down on the cold tile floor to nest in. 

I’m still feeling antsy. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I’d just had ten red bulls and a pot of coffee, but I haven’t. I shake my hands out, rummage nervously through the bins. In one of them I find a blond wig and some sunglasses. I put them on. 

“What do you think?” I strike a pose for him, duck lips and vogue en force. 

He pulls a pair of Ray bans, does something with his hair and makes a face back. With his leather jacket, he looks kind of 50’s greaser. Next is the tux. I find a pair of lace gloves and a black dress. 

We find a polaroid camera behind the counter. Amazingly, still with film in it. 

“I thought they stopped making this stuff!” he exclaims. 

“They did! This place is unstuck in time.” 

“Must be.” 

He takes a few photos, hands me the camera, does a quick costume change, and I snap a few more. He’s a pro. I’m not.

  
  


 

He looks at me, that way. In his head he’s already in my pants. And I have every intention of letting him get there in reality. But there’s something else too. He wants this moment. 

He starts humming softly, shuffling his feet, his shoulders popping up and down softly as he makes his way towards me. He offers me his hand. I laugh (more than a little embarrassed for both of us) and accept it. He pulls me to him. I recognize the tune. 

“Is that… is that Mmm Bop?” 

“Bop bop doo wop!” He grins and twirls me and I laugh. 

“You are never off, are you?” 

“Nope,” he says, false modesty somehow not off putting on him. “But you know what? You look amazing.” He spins me in to him and holds me, my arms crossed around my body. “I wish you’d let me kiss you. You are very kissable right now.” 

“Thank you,” I look at my feet. “But no.” I’m trying my best to make this light, but I can tell he’s not going to give up on his quest any time soon. And part of me wants to give in. It felt so good. And it would again. He catches me looking at his lips and I blush and stutter and pull away and I can feel it, his triumph.

“We should get the blankets and get back to the restaurant.” I let go of his hand. 

“Right,” he says. And he doesn’t say anything else for awhile. We eat our protein bars and drink our water in silence. 

———————

In the pitch black of the walk in I feel my way over to where he is sitting on the floor. He’s still kind of pouting. Getting ready for sleep. But he’s not going to, not for awhile. Not if I have anything to do with it. I want to make up, but also I crave the sex. Now that we’re using it, I’ve gotten used to a regular orgasm and his body is endlessly fascinating to me. 

I climb over his legs and put both hands on his shoulders, pushing his back to the surface of the blankets. 

“Wha… what are you doing?” he stammers.

“Blowing off some steam,” I reply, straddling his hips, my fingers fumbling with his jeans, repeating his words from our first time.

“Blowing… damn.” He doesn’t seem to be able to get past the first word, despite the fact that I’m using his phrase.

He reaches up, his fingers tugging tentatively at the bottom of my t shirt. He pulls at it for a while, debating something internally, then lets his fingers slip beneath the hem, the oval pads light on the surface of my belly, so light that I think he’s only touching the soft invisible down of hair on my skin, not the skin itself. He’s just above the waistband of my panties, and I have the urge to swat his fingers  away, but I don’t. I want to to tell him we have no time for this shit, we should just get to it, but I don’t. He moves slowly, so slowly that it barely feels like he is moving at all. My entire body lights up with the few square centimeters of contact like flares on a moonless night, goosebumps prickle all the way down my body. His palms rest on the outside of the thin cotton fabric, searing into my pelvis, his fingertips playing quicker now.

I say his name. As softly as he’s touching me. 

He says mine, and it all escalates. His hands slide up between the layers of my clothing, warm and humming with life, his fingers knowing what to do even though my particular landscape is relatively new. He skirts the elastic of my bra, and getting no resistance, he slides into second. I try hard to maintain control of my legs as he rolls the pebbles of skin between his fingers, sensation tugging deep within my chest with every roll of his fingers but my thighs buckle and I slide down onto his erection. It slips lengthwise against me and the pressure triggers a wave of pleasure that blooms up and out along my hips. I can’t see his face in the dark, but I can hear his breath. When I lost my legs I fell forward and caught myself with my palms on his chest and and I can feel the irregular stutter of his lungs.

When he’s paid sufficient attention to each breast he slips his hands up my ribs and lifts, rolls me onto my side so that we are lying blindly face to face. I can feel how near he is, feel his heat and his presence. He searches for my cheek and finds it, his thumb swiping my lower lip, like he is touching something delicate, something fragile, even with blood spatter still on my skin in spots and my unwashed clothes in the corner. Even with the knowledge that I am not, in fact, anything close to delicate. Still, he handles me carefully, more for himself than for me. I want to crush myself against him, to take him rough and hard, milking him of everything he has to give. But he needs to pretend that I am still capable of this sweetness and humanity. Intimacy. Affection. I play along and lie to myself about my reasons. 

I feel him pull my face towards his, his fingers fisted at the nape of my neck. Maybe he will take his kiss. But I turn away at the last second, his teeth raking against my neck in frustration. I lick the outline of the thick V that runs from his collarbone to his jaw, dragging the flat of my tongue up the salty surface, feeling his heartbeat jump in his arteries.

I can’t take much more, I need the release. I need to be filled. I feel the bubble surface again, the manic drive pushing up against my diaphragm, my heart beating faster and faster. My hands chart a path, a straight shot to the button on his jeans. I reach under the waist, feeling for the hard, sturdy cock I am desperate to be full of.

I chuckle low as I wrap my fingers around it over the thin worn cotton of his boxers.  
“I need you right now,” I whisper, and feel it jump in my hand. We shed our clothing unceremoniously. Efficiently.

He hesitates for a fraction of a second and I move in, straddling him again.

“I could pick up some of the slack for your lost vibrator,” he says as his fingers trail the inside of my thigh, stopping at the joint between my leg and my labia, pushing back just along the outside of my lips, tracing the seam. I laugh a little too hard, keeping a secret for now, and I can feel his confusion, but it doesn’t last as he finds other things to occupy him. 

His finger travels down the center furrow, and back. He pushes back and forth, between, past the aching nub, past the slick smooth lips, inside. I feel his body shift and hear the faint rustle. With his other hand he has located the condom he always has nearby now. 

“I’d rather we do it manually, if you don’t mind.” 

“I don’t mind.” 

“How does that feel?” He’s going to use the dangerous F word on me now. 

“It feels… it feels amazing, Josh.” He likes it when I say his name, but I still feel self-conscious when I say it. 

I like it when he fucks me like an animal, and I tell him so. I want no words, just a tumult of frenzied thrusting, no art, no science. Just us, down to the basics, down the brutal roots of our DNA. Just him, sticking me from behind, one arm wrapped around my waist, the other around my chest or in my hair, his teeth in my shoulder.

“Do you like that, Roxie?” he demands as he thrusts harder and deeper, enough that I have to stifle my screams. 

“Yes!” I hiss. 

“What do you like?” His voice is hard, deep and ragged as an abandoned quarry. 

“I like it when you fuck me,” I say, my own voice aching and dry. 

“Say it like you mean it.” 

This is different. Dangerous. I cry out, and I don’t know why. 

“I mean it, Josh! I like it when you fuck me! I love it when you fuck me!” 

He makes a sound that could almost be pain if I didn’t know better and buries himself inside me to the hilt and I am so worn down, so thin, so sensitive that I can feel the cum making its way under his skin, along his shaft in long pulses, I can feel the pressure behind his release as it hits the last edge inside of me. I can feel his cock swell hard, pushing out against me as well as in, and then he falls. His forehead hits my shoulder blade, and I can feel his heart beating at every single point of contact. He’s a giant raw beating heart, draped over my back, undone. 

He peels himself off of me, our skin separating reluctantly. He lays down. He doesn’t say anything, just finds my hand and pulls me down to him. When I’m settled into the hollow where his chest meets his shoulder, he says “I’m sorry. That you didn’t…” 

“It’s fine,” I say. And it is. He has no idea what he’s done to me. For me. The bubble has popped. 

We fall asleep naked for a few hours, although we really, really shouldn’t.

————

“You know what the worst thing about the zombies in LA?” she asks me when we wake up. It’s not quite dawn yet. We have some time. 

“You mean besides the appetite for human flesh?” 

“Yeah, besides that,” she laughs. “The breast implants. When those things go, they fucking go. Gravity sucks. I saw one chick with her shirt torn off, implants hanging out. They were still attached by some scar tissue. Sometimes they were popped and it was just a plastic bag looking thing hanging out of a chest. So gross.” 

“That is pretty nasty. I don’t even like them in living girls. Small is just fine.” 

“That’s good because…” 

“You’re perfect.” My fingers trace the underside of her breasts, and I make slow figure eights around them until her nipples are hard and her breathing is quick. 

“Stop teasing me,” she scolds. But that’s not what I want to hear. In retaliation, she pushes me down and presses her hands flat on my hip bones, moving in closer and closer, but not close enough, pressing a kiss to the tiny curve of hair and skin just below my belly button, ignoring my growing erection. It’s magnificent torture. 

She startles suddenly, remembering something. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have a game for us to play!” 

“What kind of game?” I’ve never played one of her games. I have no idea what to expect. I hear her get up and fumble around with something in the dark. Sounds heavy. 

“It’s a guessing game,” she says. “Good for playing in the dark.” I hear something thunk in front of me and the sound of packaging. “Okay, hold out your hands. Both of them.” 

I comply. Something long and heavy is deposited into them. “Guess what it is,” she says. 

I know what it is. “Where the fuck did you get a giant dildo?” 

“Two stores down. Adult novelty.” 

We both laugh, harder than I’ve laughed in a long time, and she actually sounds like she means it. She is highly amused with herself, and it makes my heart lift a little bit. 

“Okay, your turn. Here’s the flashlight, pick something out of the bag. I’ll close my eyes.” 

“Okay hold out your hands.” 

——————-

I do have an unfair advantage, I picked everything out. I laugh. “Oooh, fleshlight not flashlight. Right?” 

“Right!” 

We go back and forth, a rabbit vibrator, a George Bush butt plug (that one was hard, even knowing what it was. I’d also grabbed Pat Robertson and Mitt Romney). A leather cock ring with studs, some anal beads, a bottle of flavored lube, a strap on harness. We score evenly, literally rolling around on the floor laughing after each turn, touching whenever possible. 

“Okay, last turn, and it’s the tie breaker. Winner gets a favor of the loser’s choice.”   
He fumbles around for a minute. “Hold out your hands,” he chuckles. He sounds far too mischievous. 

I feel something long, warm and heavy drop into my hands. “Oh, it’s warm! And smooth! Must be the self heating vibrator. Turn it on.” 

“It is turned on,” he says, his voice dark and raspy. “And you guessed wrong. I guess that means I win.” 

“I guess this means I have to choose a favor to give you.” 

“One for the road,” he says. 

“Get over here then,” I laugh. “You have to find my mouth with that thing.” 

————-

Dawn breaks, and we need to get on the road. We climb the ladder to the roof and look down on the wall of undead ten deep standing between us and the bike. 

“Shit,” he says. “We must have been louder than I thought.”

  
**  
**   


 

 


	11. | LV/KY

**LV**

It’s a mixed crowd. There’s a group of showgirls that seem to be stuck together somehow, a leather daddy with something on a leash, a janitor, a Hooters waitress, some housewives. At least a hundred more, nondescript and decaying. 

“We need a distraction,” I whisper. 

 

“Yeah, but what?” 

“Do you think the gas is still on in the restaurant? We could blow it and go around them.” 

“We could do that,” he says thoughtfully. “But the bike is awfully close still. I don’t want to set off the gas tank.” 

“That’s true. Shit. Let’s get the gear, in case they try to get in.” 

I try to think through the chorus of low moans coming from below us. There has to be a way. There always is. I just can’t see it yet.  

——————

**KY**

“It was her,” Connor asserts. 

“It was, I saw her too,” Andre reluctantly agrees. 

“What the fuck would she be doing with them? How did they even know about this place?” Michelle demands. 

Everyone is silent. Some expectantly, some confused, some looking down at the floor guiltily. 

“It was true, mom,” Connor says. “The song. He brought her here. It was one of their places.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Michelle is livid. “Josh swore up and down that song was bullshit and that she was just using his name.” 

“Michelle…” Andre starts. 

“And  _you!_  You knew too, didn’t you?” she screams. 

“Yes. I told him it was stupid. But he’s stubborn. You know that.” 

“Well, if he ever gets here…” she loses all her steam at that thought. “If he ever… fuck.” She sinks down into the sofa. 

“Um, I know this is family business and all, but can someone explain what’s going on to the newbies? It kind of affects us too…” Terra pipes up. 

They all look around, silently electing Andre to speak. 

“Her name is Shannon,” Andre says. “She was Josh’s first serious girlfriend. First love.” 

Michelle mumbles something under her breath. 

“Wow,” Candice breathes out. 

“She cheated on him. She dumped him. She broke his heart. And he still started seeing her again. And again,” Amanda shakes her head. “Fucking idiot.” 

“So a few years ago she wrote this song that implied that they’d been seeing each other in secret and had plans to run away together but he never showed and she left. At least that’s her side of the story,” Andre says quietly. 

“Yeah, Josh tells it a little differently,” Connor says. 

“And don’t forget that she basically called me a controlling bitch,” Michelle says. 

“She’s not even the first ex-girlfriend to release that sentiment as a song. She could have at least been original. How many times did he do this? Even after the song?”

No one says anything. No one really knows. 

Chris slips his arm around his wife’s shoulder and kisses her temple. “Don’t worry, babe. Who else is going to survive all this? Bitches get shit done.” 

The tension in the room evaporates as she chuckles softly and leans into him. 

“So what are we going to do?” Amanda wants to know. “If they come back? Are we going to shoot all of them? Please say yes.” 

“I don’t know,” Chris says, shaking his head. “If we have to.” 

——————

**LV**

“We could…” he starts to say. “No, that won’t work.” 

“What do we have?” 

“Between the two of us? The Glock, the machete, some rope, one flare, some food, three liters of water, three tactical knives, two cans of gas, a can opener, a first aid kit, iodine tablets, quick clot, hand sanitizer, mess kit, survival handbook, small atlas, three lighters, toilet paper, superglue, your peeing… thing, a bandana, the camelbaks, space blankets, the clothes we found in the thrift store, whatever we can use from the restaurant, and gum.”

“You and your gum.” 

“I like my gum.” 

I ignore this and move on. “Well I guess there are worse combinations of things to MacGyver with.” 

“It’s too bad zombies aren’t afraid of fire.” 

“Why are they down there, anyway? You don’t really think they heard us.” 

“It’s possible.” 

“But not likely.” I lean over the edge. I think I see something, a cluster of movement, concentrated in a small circle. I move down the roofline for a better view. A small bloody skeleton, possibly a dog or coyote. They’ve stripped it almost clean and now there are ten or so breaking bones and gnawing on them. 

“What kind of food do we have? Any meat?” 

“Nope. Just a few cans of beans and some candy and protein bars. And saltines.” 

“Cans?” I look up. I have an idea. “And how much rope?” 

——————

**LV**

“What are you thinking?” I ask her, handing over the rope. She has that look in her eye. The one that happens right before dead heads roll. 

“Hand me the rope and a can. We’ll see if it’ll work.” She picks up the rope and ties the can to one end. “See the power lines?” 

“Are you serious?” Is she thinking what I think she’s thinking? I look up at the lines running from over the building to the parking lot. There’s a messy junction where the mall drew it’s power, but there’s no way to climb it. 

“Yep. There’s no current running through them anymore. See how this one runs from the roof almost to the bike?” She points from above our heads to where the line meets a power pole on the edge of the parking lot. “If we can get to that pole, we can climb down and it’s only ten feet or so to run.”

“Damn. Good thing I didn’t park right in front like I was going to. We’d be screwed. What if they see us? Or hear us?” 

“Then we’ll have our work cut out for us.” 

“I guess I’ll get the key ready.” 

“Good idea.” She pauses. “Actually, do we have any glass bottles? We’ve got gas and rags…” 

“Molotov cocktails?” I grin. Something my mom would never let me make at home. 

“On it.” I scramble down the ladder and find three glass beer bottles in the restaurant. I lock the walk in door on my way back in, just in case. When I get back up to the roof she’s chucking the can of beans over the power lines, trying to loop the rope over the top. She finally catches the number of lines she feels will be sufficient to hold our weight. 

“There’s a slight incline so we’ll have to shift our weight across. And we only have enough rope to make one of these. Unless you want to try to climb the rope all the way up and tightrope down the line. Some of them are higher, it would only be slightly less dangerous than a rope bridge. Over a horde of zombies.” 

“Yeah let’s do that. I’ll get the bottles ready. Just in case. It really is too bad they’re not afraid of fire.” 

“They’re not afraid of anything. Anymore. But it might slow them down just enough.” 

“I hope so.” 

“Get out a lighter,” she says as she unties the can of beans and hands it back to me. I put it back into my backpack. She puts her weight on the rope, tugging, testing the lines to see if they’ll hold. 

“Okey dokey. Are we ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be. Is everything packed up?” 

“Yeah.” I hand her her pack. 

“We should wrap our hands. Rope burn is not fun. But you have your gloves.” 

“I do. Those lace things from last night are not going to cut it for you.” My pants get a little snug at the thought of last night, but it doesn’t last. 

“I’ll figure something out,” she grins, reading my dirty mind. 

I tuck the molotov cocktail bottles into the front pocket of the backpack and the lighter into my pocket and I strap a gas can to our waist. There’s no way we are leaving them behind. 

“Ready?” she says. 

“As I’ll ever be.” 

She knots the rope at the bottom and  scrambles up to the wire, swinging up a leg and hooking it over the wire, pulling herself up in a graceful and intuitive display of Newtonian physics. I went through a period of fascination with physics during my homeschooling, when math suddenly opened up and translated into the real world and sports and the mechanics of the give and take of a finite amount of energy in the universe. It didn’t last very long and I didn’t retain much of the actual equations, but it had left a visual impression. 

As did she. 

“Are you coming or what?” Her words snapped me out of my scientifically sexual reverie.  

“Yeah!” I grab the rope and scale it a little slower than her, but there’s no one to pay attention. 

I mimic her path but not her movements. But I think I catch her sneaking a look. 

“Come on. Pull up the rope,” she nods toward it. “And be quiet,” she says as she looks back at me, one foot in front of the other, the moans and gurgles of the undead below us. A few have noticed. A few who have lost their sight cock their ears upward at us in compensation, their decaying limbs dragging or raising toward us, and slowly the others take notice as we make our way across the street, to the parking lot. 

One or two start the path toward where we are going, following the sound. 

I pull the rope up and start to make the distance, slowly. But not quite surely. We both lose our footing a couple of times. I reach out to catch her, and slip myself a little bit. She looks back at me and I get the message.  _Don’t do that again._ But I’m sure she’s wording it differently in her head. 

My heart is pounding, I take a deep breath. 

We make it to the pole. 

We still have ten feet, and with a few minutes to get down, we will have fifteen, maybe twenty moaners to deal with by the time we get down, and to get to the bike… the longer we wait the more there will be. 

“We should hurry,” I whisper. 

“No shit,” she whispers back, reaching the transformer and skirting around it. Her hands are wrapped in cloth still, so the tarred surface doesn’t splinter into her hands as she hugs her way down. 

They’re closing in. She would make it, if it were just her. But it’s not. “Get down and I’ll toss you the fire!” I yell, no longer caring whether or not they hear us. One scratch from even one of the dozen or so that are already aware of us is enough. I climb half way down and pull the backpack around, pulling out one of the bottles. She’s ready. I light it and toss it to her, as she lobs it at the crowd in what seems like slow motion. Once it explodes we’re going to have to get the fuck out.  ** _Move, Hutcherson!_**  I tell myself, willing my limbs to do what’s necessary. I’m about three quarters of the way down when she screams. 

“I need another one! Josh!” I pull the second bottle from my pack. I light it and toss it. I nod ahead of her and lob it into the crowd. She understands, whirling and wielding her knife, but it’s only useful at close range. I slide down the rest of the way, and I can feel the splinters biting into my skin but right now that doesn’t matter. I pull the gun and start shooting, clearing the way. We’re close. We’re so close. 

I reach the bike first and get the key in but she’s behind now, holding them off. 

“Roxie!” I scream as one of them grabs her arm and bites down, getting a mouthful of duct tape. It’s got her tight in its grip though and she’s struggling. “Duck!” I demand and aim for the head. It goes down, but they’re closing. I pull the rag from the bottle and stuff it into the top of the gas can. I light it and toss it hard as I reach out to her, as we’re pushed backward by the force of the blast that goes off a second later. It’s enough, barely. I pull her to the bike as I’m shooting. I jump on and she’s right behind me. Finally, we’re on the move. 

“Did you see?” she yells into my ear, loud enough to hear over the noise. 

“Yeah, I saw! They almost had us.” 

“No, did you see? Around the bike? Fresh cigarette butts. Someone was there. Someone human. Waiting for us.” 


	12. | ROUTE 66

**ROUTE 66**

  
****  


It takes awhile to get all the splinters from the power pole out. And patience, deep breathing and lots of jaw clenching. I don’t want her to think I’m a pussy but some of those little fuckers dug in nice and deep. 

She gets an alcohol wipe out of the first aid kit. “This is going to sting.” 

“No shit,” I grump. 

“Awww. Baby. I’ll make you feel better soon.” She gives me the tiniest peck on the nose and while I’m distracted, starts swiping. 

Fuck.

 

“It’s okay, I know it hurts,” she says, kissing each of my cheeks softly, her uncharacteristic sweetness throwing me even more than the pain. I don’t know if she’s serious or if she’s mocking me. “You can let that devastating string of expletives go now if you want to.” 

“Thank fucking goddam shit buttfucking monkey sex, Roxie. That fucking hurts!” I want to cry but I end up chuckling and then howling like an idiot. She catches it. It’s contagious mania. “That wasn’t very devastating,” I say through the tears. From the laughter. “Sorry.” 

We’re holed up in the gym of a small town school, somewhere. Middle or high, I can’t tell. I never went. Not really. Middle of nowhere, anyway. I’m pretty sure we’re in Arizona still. 

“‘S’okay,” she says softly as she rubs ointment into each little wound. We can’t afford to use up bandages, but don’t want to get infected either. “Let’s see if we can find some water and wash our clothes today, no? Less risk of infection that way.” 

“Let’s wash all our clothes,” I giggle. 

“You’re crazy, boy.” 

“Takes one to know one.” 

“I’m not a boy!” she huffs, trying not to laugh. 

“I’m not either.” I can hear how much want is in my voice. I don’t mean to let it be so obvious, but I can’t help it. I’m never going to get my Oscar, and definitely not with this performance.

“I know.” She taps me on the nose succinctly. “You’re a man.”

We lose the clothes quickly. 

For laundry. We actually get the clothes out in the sun to dry before we move on to a more horizontal situation. 

———————-

We run into trouble trying to syphon gas from a truck just past Flagstaff. We get cornered by an old dude pointing a sawed-off shotgun who’s gone a lot off the deep end, believing that the undead are demons and servants of the devil and we’re just a slightly more talky version. We’re the more dangerous version, he says. Because we sound reasonable. But he knows we’re not. 

Roxie talks him down somehow. Some kind of religious logic that I just don’t understand. 

“Catholic grandfather,” she says later when I ask, and that’s the only explanation I get. 

We run into a horde walking the roads, eating livestock and whatever they can find. It seems that the only natural force that can completely shut one of these fuckers down is complete decay. Some of them are like mummies, dried out in the desert heat. We don’t even have to hit them that hard, they fly apart like they’re made of leaves. Desiccated. If I could, I’d stay here where they dry out faster. Humidity seems to be something that would keep them together. Slimy, but together. I wonder how they fare in the really humid places. Whether they can live underwater. Well, live is the wrong word. Continue to move.

Unfortunately our lack of water gets to us as well. We try and carry as much as possible and when we find a river or lake or stream or puddle we filter and drink, then wash down as well as we can with what’s left. But we’re coming up short and it’s taking its toll on us. So the night it rains it’s a mixed blessing. We set up shelter in a tree then we get naked and have a rain shower. I’ve never been naked so much in my life. My tan lines are almost gone, except the ones on my arms from driving. I still sometimes look for the paps, reflexively. But they’re never going to be there. Still I can’t shake that feeling. That someone is watching. 

We collect water in one of the space blankets we set up inside a basin we make out of rocks. We fill up everything we have, iodine it, drink as much as we can and fill it all up again. It’s enough that over the next few days the cracks in my lips heal up and I start to feel less like I’m going to dry out and fly apart. But we’re always cold and wet, and we don’t sleep much. 

———————-

I get a little fixated on her nipples. 

We’re naked and wrapped up in a pile of blankets we found in a little community center, folded and stacked away ready to comfort bodies that never came. She’s warm, but not turned on so her nipples are like puffy little dark pillows and I can’t keep my mouth off of them.

She’s laughing at me, just watching as I draw one completely into my mouth and suck hard enough to elicit a surprised gasp. I feel it tighten and solidify under my tongue and I release it with a satisfactory pop and survey my handiwork.

“What are you doing?” she asks, regarding me like I’m a scientific specimen.

“Playing,” I reply. It seems like that should be obvious. She sighs and lays her head back down, content for the moment to let me have complete access to her body. I feel a static energy building between us and I can tell we’re in for one of those nights. The kind where neither of us feels like remembering where we are and what we’re doing here. It’s happened a few times now. We’ll be relatively safe and she’ll start tickling me, daring me to make noise. We get silly and crazy with a kind of reckless bitter edge, we know it’s dangerous but we are beyond giving any fucks. Getting them, on the other hand…

I settle myself between her legs, nudging her knees open. I rest my body lightly against hers, my face between her breasts, my chest on her stomach, her pubic bone nestled into the concave of my belly. It feels good just to be with another living person, at this point. Warm skin to warm skin, her fingertips absentmindedly exploring my scalp. I pull the blanket up around our shoulders and savor the rare stillness, our vulnerable bodies cocooned, our thoughts our own. For the moment.

She likes it when I talk. It doesn’t even matter what I say. Sometimes I recite old chunks of dialogue that are lodged permanently in my head from too much rehearsal at too young an age. She likes Zathura and Journey better than any of the others. Although I can send her into hysterics with any of the love monologues from little Manhattan. She laughed until she fell asleep crying one time in a fireworks superstore just from the bit about love being pain you don’t wish on your worst enemy. She has never seen any of my movies. It’s still kind of weird for me. A tiny bit of a blow to the ego. But then she didn’t even know what a Terminator was so I felt a little better. A little.

I’m rattling on about some shit I got up to on the set of something one time when she pulls my head up, holding my cheeks in her hands.

“You talk a lot,” she says.

I’m a little confused. “I thought you liked that.”

“Usually…” she muses. She’s thinking. The gears are whirling. I never know what to expect when she doesn’t just say what’s in her head. If she has to think about it, it might be terrible or matter or something similarly scary.

“I want to try kissing again.” She says.

“Really?” She’s not going to have to ask me twice.

“Yeah. Get up here.”

I scramble up to meet her, suddenly uncertain. Willing, able, absolutely. But uncertain.

She brings her forehead up to meet mine. “It’s okay, Juice Box.”

She calls me that sometimes now. “I know,” I grudge, a little defensive. but only a little, because she’s actually going to let me kiss her again.

I sneak a look at her lips, she’s got one between her teeth, and if she backs out now… But she doesn’t. She angles her face up and brushes her lips to mine, a vapor thin shower of sparks descending down my body, pooling in the pit of my stomach and through the tip of my dick, down my thighs. I moan into her and descend, unable to resist her invitation any longer. I devour her, wetting her dry lips with my tongue, parting them. I slip into her mouth, greedy for the sensation. She matches me with equal enthusiasm that borders on desperate mania, as she clutches me and I’m grasping at her body, hips under my fingertips, then her clit under my thumb, then my fingers inside, feeling her out, making her ready and then I’m really inside her, my cock and my fingers, everything, everywhere. She screams into my mouth and I swallow the sound, I swallow the proof of her pleasure like it’s air or water, I need it so badly. I task my fingers with finding that nerve bundle again, finding that thing that will make her break apart, my mouth on hers now wet and it’s so different than when we were just fucking, just to get the tension out. Now we’re feeding off of each other, an electric loop, an eel eating its own tail.

We are one thing, one creature as I thrust into her and I feel her clench and the energy surge up into her mouth as she gives it back to me, wrapping her arms and legs and tongue and lips around anything she can get ahold of. She’s so slippery and breathy and her hot wetness clamps down on me involuntarily as she unravels completely, as she consumes me with both her mouths, sucking my cock and my tongue inside her body, holding me as she pulses and thrums around me. I’m on the edge and I can’t hold on any more as she relaxes and releases and plants tiny kisses all over my face and throat and she growls into my ear, resentful, angry, tender. “I need you.”

That’s all it takes to push me over the edge. I release into her, inside her, and remember we’ve neglected the condom this one time but she’s still on the pill and there’s always the morning after measures. I don’t linger on that though as I lose myself in the expelling, the throbbing and the aching subsiding, completely spent.

She lets my stay there, holding me while our respiration and heart rates settle. There’s no need to pull out and take off a condom. I feel myself against her slippery sheath of skin, the slightly squeaky tug of my semen as I slowly unswell inside her makes me groan. I already want this again, and again. And again. But we agreed that it would be a monstrous mistake to get pregnant. Not the usual kind of mistake from before, but the kind that could get us both killed and bring an innocent person into this horror show of a world.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, her voice almost a whisper. She never asks me things like this. She never wants to know how I feel. In fact she likes to roll off and go to sleep or go on watch or whatever needs doing. She’d rather skin roadkill, most of the time. So I tread carefully.

“Nothing. Just that, that this feels so good.”

“Without the condom?”

“Yeah, that too.”

I feel her breathing stop for just the tiniest fraction of a second.

“Did you think it was stupid? That I didn’t want to kiss?” she asks quietly.

“I thought you had your reasons. At first I thought it was me and then I remembered what an awesome kisser I am.”

She slugs me half heartedly on the arm. “You know why though, right?”

“I think so.”

She laughs, but it’s bitter and cold. “I didn’t want to feel anything.” Warmth sparks in the pit of my belly as I realize what that means. 

I made her feel something.

“I know.” I spent more than half my life trying to figure out why people feel (or not feel) and think the way they do. I knew. But I keep that to myself. She needs to say this. And I want her to say it to me. But she never exactly does what I expect.

“I was a mistake, you know. My mom was sixteen when she got pregnant and had to leave school.”

“I’m sorry,” I say after a long pause, and my fingers that had been absently stroking her arm migrate to tighten around her ribs, just a little bit. She can protest if she likes, but she doesn’t. She lets out a sigh that sounds like resignation, or contentment. I can’t tell.

I can’t imagine not being wanted. If nothing else my parents made sure I knew I was always, always part of their plans for their life. Even if I had been a surprise, I don’t think they would have told me.

“I can’t let myself get pregnant. If I could I would sterilize myself, but I don’t know how.”

“Wow. I… I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“It’s okay,” she cups my face in her hand, her thumb rubbing quietly over my cheekbone. “I’m sure someday things will settle down and you’ll find some nice beautiful girl with lovely wide hips to give you a dozen little Joshes to help repopulate humanity.”

I wonder where she plans on being. But I don’t ask. “You make it sound so…vulgar. And sad.”

“Sad things happen,” she shrugs. There’s something in her voice.

“What happened? To you?” I slow down. “If you want to tell me.” 

“I did go out of town, at first. But so did everyone else with a pulse. I was at a farmhouse. It had food, a well. It didn’t look inhabited but it was a trap. Three very large and smelly men kept me chained up in the basement with half a dozen other girls. They wanted to ‘fatten me up’ before they really got down to the serious impregnating. So it was just a few times. That they raped me. But it was enough. I bit one of their dicks off, first time he shoved it in my mouth. Spit it back out at him. The other two tried to teach me a lesson while he was bleeding out on the floor, but when they were moving me to wherever they planned on doing that I cracked open their fucking heads. I let the girls go but two of them were pregnant already. I told them to stay there, keep the perimeter secure. I taught them how to use the guns. But I went into the town one day and when I came back they were gone. I can’t blame them, I guess. Bad memories. But I would have stayed with them.”

She goes quiet on me. “Hey. Hey, look at me. You did what you could,” I attempt to reassure her.

“The youngest one was eleven, I think. She had just gotten her period. So tiny.”

Now it’s my turn to go quiet. Mostly. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. I decided I’d rather be with dead people. Much less complicated, and you can’t even call them evil. They do what they do, and it’s easy to figure out. Not like living people. So I came back to the city.”

“Where you met me.”

“Yep.” She ruffles my hair a little, cocks her head at me thoughtfully. “You need a haircut Juice Box.”

“You gonna give me one, beeyotch?”

“Since you ask so nicely! Let me get my knife!”

She pretends to pull away but I catch her wrists. She startles, for real this time, reliving one of the memories she’s just dug up that doesn’t usually float so close to the surface, doesn’t usually cause her to react like this. Realizing what I’ve done I release them quickly, holding up my hands in apology. Something soft and hard at the same time flashes over her face.

“Don’t worry, I can take you,” she says as she pulls me back down to her lips and kisses me deep and hungry. But so much else.

When she finally releases me, lungs starved for air, I search her face.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she turns away self-consciously, then turns back, the novelty of the situation and her curiosity overwhelming her desire to keep everything down and away from me. I can feel her debating whether to close me out or let me in.

“Because you’re letting me.”

By morning we hadn’t gotten much sleep and our lips are raw. Day is good for sleeping sometimes. Less activity. We take turns. And we really need our rest, though we didn’t know it yet.


	13. | NM

 

****

We're back on the road the next morning, rested but hungry.

We make good time. We’re in New Mexico before long. New Mexico. I’ve been there a couple of times. Good parties, good weed. But I never got out of my social strata much. I’m amazed by how impoverished it looks from outside the insulated art world, from where we’re standing. Abandoned towns, buildings, blank billboards that have been adless since long before the infections started. 

It wears my soul out in a way that killing the undead can’t. Maybe we were already doomed. 

\---------------

The road is starting to wear on us both. I never feel clean. I haven’t since we left LA, and that was just a poor substitute for the kind of clean we felt before. Particularly him, I think. His skin bothers him, he breaks out and his lips crack and he really does need a haircut. Coming from an industry where his looks were such a huge part of things to not seeing our own reflections for days, he gets disconcerted sometimes. I tell him he’s still pretty, and he doesn’t know I’m only partly kidding. It has to be difficult for him. I wrap my arms around him now when we’re on the road and I can feel his ribs. We’re both wearing thin, in so many ways. 

I can feel the grit on the road like I’m the fucking princess and the pea. I feel everything, from pothole to pebble. The smell of road sweat and dirt and fear and sex is all over us, all of the time. I would kill for a long shower, followed by a long bath. And a soft, clean bed. But that’s never going to happen again. I stuff the desire down in that spot where my desire for things as formerly mundane as ice water go. 

So when we’re exhausted and hungry and our guard is worn down and we drive a little too long into the dark and look a little too quickly for shelter in the open (we had high ground and our backs to a wall, we should have been okay) I shouldn’t have been surprised when I nod off on watch a few minutes before dawn and there is suddenly a hand on my arm and teeth deep in my bicep. My reflexes take over and it’s got a knife in it’s stupid fucking skull within seconds, but I’m left there alone, Josh sleeping a few feet beside me, and the pain of my wound doesn’t even register over the shock of the suddenness of my failure. A young man. Nondescript. Jeans. T-shirt. Someone’s son. Brother. Husband or lover maybe. Dead. Undead. Now dead again. And the creature responsible for my own death. 

“Josh,” I shake him gently. 

“What’s up Rox?” 

“You have to get up. I’m sorry,” my voice is calm. I feel nothing. “I need you to shoot me.” 

\----------------

I level the gun at her head. She doesn’t shake, she doesn’t move. She just looks at me, her eyes, one just a little different than the other, commanding me silently. She won’t give up, she’ll take the gun from me if she has to.   
  
“Do it, Josh.”   
  
She wants  _me_  to do it. She wants me to take her life.   
  
“Please, Josh. Don’t make me beg you. This is the only way it was ever going to be. I’m no good for you. I can’t give you anything you need. You’ll find someone else. Someone who can give you babies.” Her lips give me a sad smile, her eyes are hard. But under the gloss, under the thing that keeps it all together, in the viscera, is all the pain. And the very least of it is the pain of knowing that she’ll never have what we could have had. That maybe she was never meant to live, let alone be loved like she deserves.   
  
“That’s not true. You know it.” I know it. She does know it. But there is no point in arguing. I look at her arm, at the chunk of flesh missing from it, at her blood drenched hand clamped uselessly over the wound. Soon she will convulse, and die, and everything but her basest brain functions will cease. Everything she is will cease to be. Then she will come after me.   
  
I can see something starting now, her hands trembling.   
  
I wipe my eye with my sleeve.   
  
“Don’t fucking make me do this myself, Hutcherson. You know... you know that’s not... I can't... you know why.” I do know. Now her knees are shaking, and I don't know if it's emotion or the sickness invading her body. “I can’t shoot... I can’t shoot myself. I can’t.” She’s starting to lose her emotional integrity and I can’t let her go like that. Not her. Not like this.  
  
“Alright. Okay. Just. Just come here. Please. Just kiss me one more time.” She flies into my arms. Our kiss is violent and makes me aware down to the cellular level, aware of her on every level. I can’t hold her close enough. She’s hot as fire, and not in a good way. She starts to take the gun from me.  
  
“No. No! I can do this,” I steel myself. “I can do this for you.”   
  
I kiss her again, my quivering lips to her firm ones; even now she’s willing her strength to me, but I can taste salt and blood. I raise the gun to her head and squeeze my eyes shut tight, our lips knit together, as if I can keep her connected with a kiss, keep her with me. But I can’t.   
  
I pull the trigger.   
  
I feel the recoil hard against my palm.  
  
I feel her head fall back and struggle with the sudden full weight of her as she goes limp in my arms and she pulls me down, onto my knees.   
  
But I don’t let go.   


	14. NM

**NM**

**The world goes completely, concussively silent.**

I’m on my knees and she’s dead weight in my arms. I can’t even cry out. If there are any more they’ll hear me. And there are hardly ever just one. The most basic human need is to consume fuel, but it appears that a close second is the desire to not be alone.

 

  
  
It hits me like a drunk boxer, hard and indiscriminate. I’m alone. I pull her head to my chest, feel a hard ache forming, a vacuum that sucks the breath out of me.

 

  
———————  
 **CO**  
 **JUNE**

The adult size portable quarantine suit was not easy to keep on a ten month old. He didn’t like it, at all. So in the end we rigged a kind of bubble from a decon tent and a scrubber with redundant filters. It was a twelve hour flight. But we finally got them to the facility locked deep in the Rockies just outside of Denver. It was a top secret program. I was one of now seventeen people who even knew it existed outside of the military, and I’d been vetted until my colon hurt.

We all had a piece of the puzzle and none of us had the whole picture but we all guessed. I knew my part. I was a virologist with the CDC. Tasked with identifying and assessing the threat of new biological agents.

I didn’t think Mariana and Luiz were infected, but quarantine protocol is very strict and I couldn’t afford any screw ups on this one. Once they were settled in the quarantine room the process could begin. Lots of blood drawn, lots of time in isolation. I had apologized to her, in the plane. She and her baby were going to live, and we would make them as comfortable as possible, but she needed to get used to the idea that her old life was gone. She seemed happy to be alive. Happy her baby was alive. But we’d see.

 

————

**NM**

 

Something feels wrong. The recoil wasn’t hard enough, the shot wasn’t loud enough. There’s not nearly enough blood. I check the chamber of my gun. The next bullet has not loaded. Fuck. I search for a wound. There isn’t one. Without actually jamming something down the barrel or shining a flashlight through it there’s no way to know if the bullet fired, but it’s not in her head. 

I search for anything that will tell me what’s happening to her. 

In her temple I find a tiny metal dart. 

The sound filters back into the world and I hear something just as I see the movement out of the corner of my eye. I drop her as gently as I can and point the gun towards the motion.

  
In front of me is a lanky kid, no older than twenty, max. He has some kind of gun in his hand but he surrenders quickly, kneeling to place it on the ground. 

“Did I get her in time?” He seems anxious, looking behind me at her.

“I have  _no_  idea what you’re talking about and you’re going to have a bullet in your brain if you don’t start talking right now.”

He holds out his hand. “My name’s Sam…” He falters for a moment. Recognition sparks in his eyes. “Hey, you’re that guy! The actor!”

“Hi Sam.” I don’t budge. I have no patience for this. “I just shot someone I cared about a whole lot and needed more. Skip to the parts I don’t know before I shoot  _you_  and figure shit out later.”

 

 

———————  
 **CO**  
 **LATE AUGUST**

After a few months, Mariana was still just happy to be alive. I had to admire her resilience and her patience with her new life.

The facility also holds the first test subjects of the antivirus. All volunteers except one. They were under extended study. We needed to know if the virus would reactivate, if the subjects would develop immunity or antibodies.

I checked on Mariana and Luiz (who just turned one) and then I checked on my fifth test subject. We picked her up in LA by chance, as she was being attacked. We had the antiviral with us, we could save her if we got her the first shot before her heart stopped or she was injured beyond repair.

She was young and easily bored. I pulled the shade on the quarantine room and pushed the intercom button to rouse the slight blond girl stretched out on the bed in the corner, reading a magazine.

“Hey Lanchen. It’s Dr. Edwards. How are you doing?”

 

 

—————

  
**NM**

“Did you shoot her? Look! She’s breathing!” he exclaims and points around me. “I know the gun went off but…maybe she moved or you missed, maybe I got her with the dart in time. The first dart is a sedative because the second shot is really painful. I can help you…” he says quietly. Reassuringly. 

I look at my gun. “My next round didn’t chamber…” I falter, pieces clicking into place like a game of Tetris in my head. 

“Just let me look at her. In case I need to give her the second shot.” 

“What are you talking about? Who are you? What do you mean, second shot?”

“It’s a really long story. But if you let me, I can help her right now.” He holds out his hands to show he’s unarmed and starts to move slowly around me.

“She’s dead.” I try to hold back the sob that’s swelling in my throat. 

“Really? Did you shoot her?” 

“Well, I don’t think so, I think it was a squib. I need to check. There’s no entry wound…” 

“Then she’s not dead. Let me help her.” He checks her pulse and looks up at me hopefully. 

I keep the gun on him as he pulls out a vial of something and a syringe from a cargo pocket on his thigh. He loads it up and looks at me, asking silent permission. I nod and he gives her the injection. I don’t trust him but what choice do I have? She’ll either be back from the dead soon and trying to kill us or this will work. “It will take about half an hour. Then she’ll be back. She’ll be really sick for awhile, but she’ll be back. You’re going to have to hold her, though. This is the rough part. She’s probably going to convulse and you want to make sure she doesn’t swallow her tongue.” 

I sit down next to her with a solid thud and maneuver her head into my lap. “How sick?” I’m still having trouble believing that this is actually happening. 

“Her body is not going to like the shock she’s getting first from the virus, and now from the antivirus. The virus is a nasty little bitch, and it doesn’t go down without a fight. She’ll be pretty sick for a few days. We can’t move her very far for at least three days. And then she’ll be immune.” 

I stared at him blankly. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right. 

“She’ll be immune. To the virus,” he repeats. 

He pulls a small black box out of his pocket and flips a switch. “And this will keep us safe from most of the zombies in this area.”

“Hand it over.” I keep the gun trained on him even though it’s probably useless at this point until I can clear the barrel. He hands it to me gingerly. 

“Be careful with it.” 

“I will. But you’re going to have to tell me why it’s important.” I need to know what the fuck is going on. Now. “We have some time. Half an hour, right? Tell me the long story.”

 

 

———————

**CO**

  
**SEPTEMBER**

I wasn’t supposed to see it.

But I did. Someone had been very careless. So careless it almost seemed intentional. I thought about everyone who knew I was going to be at this terminal this particular morning. I couldn’t think of anyone. But someone wanted me to know. Whoever it was, I silently thanked them as I read the brief memo.

_**Erasure protocol. Lethal Force is authorized on all evidence and personnel.** _

I had no idea how much time I had. I walked back to my office as calmly as I could without causing suspicion. I texted my team.

_**Get out now. Take anything important.** _

I couldn’t have been any clearer.

My checklist:

  * One case of antivirals stage 1 & 2 with dart guns.
  * Mariana and Luiz Oliviera. Released from quarantine area for testing at exterior facility.
  * Lanchen Mihalic. Released from quarantine area for testing at exterior facility.



  
I can’t take anyone else and the rest volunteered with full knowledge of the risks. I prayed for their souls. To whichever god would listen.

It takes awhile to get them suited up and to get the necessary paperwork in order. We are going about our day as if it were any other day. I can’t let them know I know. It’s imperative that I get out.

I load them into the SUV and when we’re outside, instruct them to stay low.

We’ve almost reached the gate when the explosion lifts the back end of the car and we’re propelled forward by the blast, into the gate and through it. Past the stunned guards enforcing lockdown. Barely past the tire popper before someone hits the button a split second too late.

Lanchen wants to get back to LA. When we picked her up she was being overwhelmed in the street by a crowd. She had several bites and gouges and some of her fingernails had ripped off when she tried to dig her fingers into the pavement. A complete coincidence. Lucky for us, lucky for her.

I warn her that LA is a death trap and a stupid move but she insists. She left someone behind. So we part ways. She parts with all the cash from my wallet. Money is becoming useless. She should know. But she does it anyway. She leaves me a note. “Sorry Dr. E.” was all it said.

 

 

——————

**NM**

 

“What does this do?” I demand. He looks around. Sure enough, the biter who got Roxie was not alone. Three more are shuffling toward us. He reaches over and pushes a button on the box, and they drop where they stand.

 

“What. The fuck.” I need answers and I need them now. “Explain.”

“I was part of a secret government project. I know, sounds stupid. Unbelievable. But it’s true. I was working with the team that was in charge of the fail safe device.” 

“This.” 

“Yes. That. We programmed a defective gene into a naturally occurring virus. A virus that was spreading quickly and going to wipe out humanity one way or another. Very difficult to control because as I’m sure you’re aware, it doesn’t just kill people. It reanimates them. Someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to engineer our own version and release it, since it was happening anyway, with the defect. So that the infected would be easier to manage.”

I nod. Roxie is starting to tremble, just slightly. I hold her head as Sam finds something we can give her to bite down on, then he continues. 

“The engineered virus responds to a certain frequency. It shuts down all functions until the threat can be neutralized. They called it the Snooze Button. Because once the frequency stops broadcasting the virus reanimates and so does the corpse. And it only has a functional radius of about a quarter of a mile. 

It was supposed to be just a precaution, because they were also working on an antivirus. But some of the engineered virus got out, whether that was on purpose or not we’ll never know because three weeks after evacs started they shut us down. And by shut down I mean they blew up the fucking mountain lab. 

Some of us got out. We kept working. At our houses, in colleagues’ labs, whatever. Then people started disappearing. First it was our team leader. I guess they thought we couldn’t do anything without her but she was just a bureaucrat. She was good at getting funding. But she was pretty much useless at the science. Next our fabricator went missing. So we didn’t have the ability to manufacture our own parts and equipment anymore. Then everything went apeshit and I think they figured we’d just die off anyway. Or they were too busy trying to handle the outbreak. Whatever it was, they wanted us erased. 

Dr. Edwards— the head virologist on the team had been working on the anti-virus almost since the start of the project. That was his main work. But he assisted us on our end. We worked on the tech, he told us what we needed. So I don’t know exactly how it works, on a basic level, but it does.” 

“So who has this technology? Besides you?” 

“You’re looking at everyone.” 

“So this is the only one?”

“That is the only one. It’s the prototype.” 

“Fuck.” 

 

I try to digest all of this as we wait for something to happen, wait for her to open her eyes or make some kind of movement. But the only thing that happens is she doesn’t die, and she doesn’t turn.

  
So we wait some more.


	15. | KY

**KY**

  
**Michelle**

Candice is pregnant. There are raiders at the gates. Including  _her_. I can’t believe he lied to me. I can’t believe he went back to her. I can’t believe he’s not here yet. 

Connor is a rock. Even if he is flirting with danger. And danger’s name is Terra. Precocious little thing. I understand what he sees in her. She’s incredibly mature for her age. She’s smart as a whip. She’s killed before. I don’t know if she’s had to kill a live human, but I don’t see her not being capable of it. She scares me, to be honest. One of the first children of this new age.

 

  
Josh belongs to an old age now. His charm and personality and charisma are all useless against an enemy that feels nothing, thinks nothing, sees nothing but food. The entertainment market is gone now. We worked so hard at building his career, making his name, earning his place on the A list and now there’s no industry. No need for luxuries of any kind, including entertainment. He’ll be fine. He’s strong and he’s pretty smart. But Connor is smart in a way that is very useful right now. And then. He’s so much like his father. Ethical, unbreakable. I love them both so much. But Josh has so much me in him. Sometimes he drives me insane but I always love him. And I understand him.

He won’t even try to understand me for a few more years. Maybe not until he has kids of his own. But it doesn’t matter. I will always love him, I will always do what I have to. 

For all of them.    
 **  
Connor**

****She’s great. Adorable. Beautiful. Smart as fuck. Curious. Fuckable. That last one is wrong. But I have thoughts. Thoughts that my parents would murder the shit out of me for.

But I can’t help it. I get so distracted. I want to help her, protect her. It’s such a silly antiquated notion. I get it. Hormonal soup. Traditional male roles. I’m in the thick of it. And so is she. We could do much worse. But she’s an excellent student and with her curiosity, she might even want to know what goes on in my brain. She says things that thirteen year olds just don’t say. At least they didn’t used to.   
 **  
Terra**

****I’m crushing on him, hard.

He won’t touch me, though. I elbow him in the ribs and he acts like I tried to suck his dick. Not that I wouldn’t. Not that I know how. But I would. And that’s probably why he acts like that. I try not to be so obvious. What would he want with a little girl like me anyway? We train with our weapons, we work out, we do our chores, we study. He’s a really good tutor. Right now we’re working on math. I hate math. It makes my brain hurt. He doesn’t seem to have any problems with it at all. 

The Moms check in on us a lot when we’re studying in the library. Even Amanda and Andre stick their heads in when things “get too quiet.” 

Usually that means I’m doing work and he’s over in a bean bag by the window reading. 

They’re all scared that he’s going to take advantage of me but nobody seems to be worried that I might take advantage of him. He’s not going to touch me. They have nothing to worry about. 

I sigh, hard. I’m reading a book about all the buildings I’ll never get to see now, knowing that I’ll never get to build any. It’s not even possible anymore. 

I never cry. But right now I feel like crying. Nothing makes sense anymore, my whole future is just gone. Everything that the world promised I could be, gone. Now the best I can hope for is to keep living. I feel like we have a pretty good chance here. But just this once, I feel like crying. For what’s gone.   
 **  
Connor**

****I find her in the back of the library, behind a giant anthology of Architectural Digest. Quietly sobbing.

I slump down beside her. “What’s up T?” I’m cheerful. Annoyingly cheerful. 

“Nothing. Go away.” She wipes her eyes on her sleeve. 

“Shut up. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“No you shut up. And go away.” 

“What are you reading?” I take the book from her quietly. “This is a good one.” I point to the symmetrical building on the page she was looking at. “I love Monticello.” 

“None of that is going to happen any more, is it?” 

“What, architecture? Sure it is.” 

“I mean the really great stuff. On a huge scale.” 

“Maybe someday.” 

“But not in our lifetime.” 

“No, probably not in our lifetime.” 

“My career choices have narrowed down significantly since last year.” 

“You too?? The same thing happened to me!” I bump her with my shoulder and feel the shower of electric sparks that I wish I didn’t. It feels good, though. Warm and familiar. Even the butterflies in my stomach are comforting. 

“Shut up!” she laughs, bumping me back. “At least you got to go to college. At least you got to go to high school. I’m never going to get to go to prom, I’m never going to have a first date at some lousy chain restaurant. I’m never going to have all the things the movies promised me I would. Except the zombie movies, of course. Fucking zombies.” 

“I know.” My future has been amputated as well. But I’m doing my best to do the Hutcherson thing, to make the best of every situation. It’s not easy. But it has to be done. 

She starts to say something and then she chokes it back. 

“What?” I want to know. 

“You’re never going to like me, are you? I’m too young. I’m too stupid!” she blurts out. Fast. Then she claps her hands over her mouth and tries to take it all back in. 

I’m stunned. I know she has a crush on me. Everyone knows. But from her perspective I’m the only possible choice and everyone  _(everyone)_  is telling both of us it’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And it is. But… 

“Hey,” I try to buy myself a second of time, try to decide exactly what to say and to do here. Nothing can happen, between us. At least nothing big. Not yet. I reach down and take her hand, enveloping it slowly. Gently. Firmly. “I do like you,” I say finally. “And you’re definitely not stupid. But nothing can happen, between us, right now. There’s so much else to worry about.” 

“I know but—” 

“No buts,” I say gently. “When is your birthday?” 

“Umm… in May.” 

“Hey! Mine too! What day?” 

“The 17th.” 

“Mine’s the 2nd. We should have a party.” 

“You know in pre-industrial times it was common to start relationships in early teens. When life spans got longer people waited longer. But now…” 

“No buts!” I laugh. “We both know how we feel about each other now, right? So let’s just go with that for awhile. Let’s just be friends, for now. With an understanding. Okay?” 

“I just want  _one thing_  to be easy,” she sighs. 

“This is easy, right?” I squeeze her hand. Just that small amount of contact is lighting up my whole body, but I can’t let her know. The rule will have to be if it’s okay to do it with my mom, it’s okay to do with her. Creepy kind of, but safe.  “I think we can do this.” I squeeze her hand again. “And the Christian Side Hug.” 

We’d laughed about that video the other day. Tried to remember all the words to the song. The viral video days are over. The days of memes and cute baby animals and porn. “I know it seems unfair. And it is. I’m pissed about it. My future’s gone too, you know.” She looks up at me, a little ashamed. “But let’s worry about making things safe for your baby brother or sister before we do anything that might —” I stop myself. Suggesting that we may have sex in the future is honest but maybe premature. “Let’s just worry about the things that are already happening. Okay?” 

“Okay,” she sighs, and thunks her head down on my shoulder. Then leaves it there. I can do this. I can comfort her, without taking advantage of her. Truth is I wouldn’t be able to live with myself very easily if we did do anything now. I’m already conditioned to a set of social norms that would make me feel guilty. Like taking advantage of a drunk girl. Just not gonna do it. No matter how mature she is, how many zombie kills she’s got under her studded belt, she still has things to get through. Normal human things that are hard even under the best circumstances. 

So I’ll wait. And I’ll hold her hand when she needs it. We’ll keep ourselves alive. And wait some more.

**Michelle**

****Chris and I watch them on the security camera, holding hands in the library, mourning their aborted modern lives. Even if they survive, their lives will never be what they would have been.

They know what they’ll be missing. The new baby, it won’t know what it was like to have instant planetary connections and cell phones and airplane travel and billions of people wandering around with so many different cultures and traditions and languages and arts and science.  This baby will have to scratch out a life in the dirt with the rest of us and it will never know, really. We’ll tell the stories, I’m sure. But they’ll be the boring stories of the older generation.  

I reach out for Chris’s hand and he takes it silently. 

I switch off the monitor to the library feed, feeling intrusive all of a sudden. I trust Connor.  

As a parent, as a human being, it all breaks my heart.   
 ****  
Shannon

Now they believe me. When I told them that Josh had a fucking fortress with food and running water and electricity they didn’t believe me. But now they do. And now they want it. Bad. And they’ll kill for it. Especially after  _she_  took out Carl’s brother. 

They’ll do anything I fucking say for it. 

I know how to get in. I know how to take them down. Josh showed me.

And I’ll get to watch that bitch go down. Finally.


	16. | the road

 

She stirs, making small whimpering noises in her sleep. “Is that normal?” I ask Sam.

“I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone treated and recover before. Only read about it. I don’t remember any mention of sleep talking. Maybe it depends on the person.”

We’ve moved her to the truck, laid the back seat down and set up a bed. I hold her close, monitor her breathing, her heart rate, her temperature. She gets cold, but she doesn’t stop. Her head is cradled against my chest, my arms around her shoulders. I’m leaning back against the side of the truck. Sam is on watch with his shotgun in the front seat and I’ve finally settled my monitoring worries down enough to rest when she wakes up.

Her scream is so loud and bloodcurdling that I clamp my hand over her mouth to keep from attracting any unwanted attention. Not that we have to worry about the undead, it’s the living I’m worried about now. I remember the cigarette butts in Vegas. And that feeling I can’t shake.

Her eyes are wide and her scream is so primal that Sam and I both have the same visceral reaction. Then just as suddenly as she started, she stops and her eyes close slowly, then pop open, then close again. But she’s breathing normally. It’s not the shallow raspy breath she’s had for the last sixteen hours. 

 

“Talk to her,” he says. “She’s disoriented and depending on how far the virus got before I gave her the second shot, she may have some memory loss.”

I don’t know what to say. I’m suddenly as self-conscious as I would be on an audition where I really want the part. Down to my toenails. I know how to do this, I know what to do. I take a deep breath and just talk, let the words flow.

“Roxie,” I say softly. “Roxie, it’s me, Josh. Do you remember me? We met about a month ago.” No response. “Remember? Remember LA? You’re from LA. You’re twenty-three. I don’t know when your birthday is, I’m sorry. I don’t even know your favorite color. Hell, I don't even know your last name. Or your middle name. But since we’ve met, I... You’re helping me get to my family in Kentucky.”

I take a deep breath and go on. “Come on, baby girl. You’re strong. You can fight this. You’re so strong. I’ve never met anyone who can do what you do. And not just the fighting. You’ve lost everything and you keep going. And you’re funny. God...come on. Roxie. Please. Remember when we met and you didn’t trust me to even look at you? Remember that night, after Vanessa? The first time we... were together?” I sneak a peek up at Sam. He blushes and pretends not to hear as he looks away. “All those hours and hours of driving and the rain showers and the tree we slept in? Remember how we got off the roof in Vegas? I couldn’t have done that alone. I need you. Please come back.” I choke back the feelings. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I...I shot you. I’m so sorry, Roxie. I know it’s what you wanted, I know it’s what had to happen. But if that bullet hadn’t stuck, you would be gone forever. I don’t know what I’d...”

She shifts and I hold my breath. I’m about to start talking again when her eyes flutter open. They’re bloodshot and scared. But there’s recognition, and relief. A person in there. I don’t realize how anxious I was that what makes up who I know as Roxie wouldn’t recover until that moment, until the relief washes through me. I smooth her hair, the backs of my fingers savoring the warmth of her cheek. “That’s it. come back.”

Her eyes won’t leave mine, she doesn’t even look around, she dials in on them like they’re a life raft and she’s terrified of drowning.

“Do you know who I am?” I ask her.

She nods. She tries to speak but it’s like something between her brain and her vocal chords isn’t quite reconnected and she clutches at her throat. I look up at Sam. “Is this normal?”

“It depends on which part of the brain got the most virus. It builds protein structures that are like little fingers, tendrils that make the brain retain function after the body is dead and they invade quickly. I think I remember that the frontal lobe is the first target and speech is commonly affected.”

I look back at her. “Did you understand that?”

She nods. She looks at her bandaged arm and feels her head, for where the bullet would have gone.

“The gun misfired. And Sam shot you with the tranq right before I pulled the trigger.” I nod at him. “He’s a scientist. He worked on the government on the project that made the antivirus. And then he stole it. So congrats, dude. You’re immune now. You can let them take chunks out of you and you’ll have to bleed to death the old fashioned way.”

She smiles at this. She looks up at Sam and nods her thanks, her lips trying to form words but they aren’t recognizable. Her brows furrow in frustration.

“Don’t worry, your brain will repair itself. Brains are really cool that way,” Sam says. He sounds nineteen now. Unsure and trying to cover. “Why don’t you guys rest and I’ll drive for awhile.”

We’re in the SUV he was driving when he happened to be driving by us, happened to see what was happening in the pale dawn light. He got there just a few seconds too late, while he was loading the dart gun, Roxie begging me to shoot her.

We leave my bike behind in an abandoned shed, covered with tarps. I promise her that I’ll come back and get her if I can. I don’t know if that will be possible, but I hope so.  

The SUV is pretty roomy. I curled up next to her when she had a fever, and it was cold, and I was grateful for the heat even though I shouldn’t have been. At least she didn’t need me to warm her up.

But now she’s shivering and I pull her to me, wrapping an arm around her waist, my other arm under her head. I use my backpack as a pillow. I pull the blanket over us and the shivering gradually fades. She turns and looks at me, trying to communicate something.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Rox.”

She sighs and tries again, with her eyes. Something...I don’t know. 

“Can you write?” I ask. Her eyebrows pop. She grabs some paper and a wax pencil from her pack. 

**_Im sorry._ **

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

**_I fel asleep_ **

"We were exhausted. I should have stopped sooner. I should be apologizing to you."

She shakes her head sadly. **_It could hav ben you._**

"Shhhhh. It doesn't matter now. It really doesn't." She purses her lips stubbornly but doesn't push the subject.

**_Thnak yoo._ **

“My pleasure.” I smile.

**_Im afraad to slepp._** I can see the fear in her eyes, clear as a fish in a bowl. I don't blame her. I know it's hard for her to write.

“Don’t be. I’m right here.”

_So tired. Trust you._

I feel a prickling sting behind my eyes but I hold it together. I pull her to me, kissing her forehead softly.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

She leans up to kiss me and then falls asleep in my arms.

I don’t let go.

\--------------

I died. At least it felt like I did. I died and came back, through a fire, through a blue tinged veil of flame that burned in my head like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It threatened to push me out, to take what I am. But it didn’t happen that way.

He would have done it. He did it. He said it. It comforts me. He doesn’t even understand. I get that it weighs on his heart, that he pulled that trigger. But not on mine. If he hadn’t, I don’t know if I’d let him do what he’s doing now. Holding me. Rocking me to sleep. I don’t like weakness. I understand it, but I don’t get it and I can’t handle it in someone I need to get my back. He’s proven that he can, and he will. Why he doesn’t see it, I don’t know. I guess he’s blinded by his guilt. But he shouldn’t be. He should know that but right now he doesn’t. He only sees that I would be gone if that bullet had fired.

But it didn’t. And I’m here. Safe. Warm. With him.

Emotional attachments are dangerous. But in this case, I’m using the Spartan justification. Warriors in ancient Sparta were encouraged to bond sexually and emotionally because that meant the desire to protect one another would be stronger. This emotional bond will motivate us to protect each other. I know I would be able to pull the trigger if he turned. Surely he knows it. But that’s not going to happen if I can help it. The fury I feel is at myself. For falling asleep. For letting him down. For failing.

So I guess we all have our blind spots.

I could see it as weakness, what I’m feeling for him. But I can’t avoid it anymore. All I know is that I will never ever fall asleep on watch again. But right now, right now I can fall asleep. And I do.

\----------------

I switch off with Sam and he lays in the back with Roxie. He sleeps, but they don’t touch. They’re strangers, he’s a stranger, but he doesn’t set off any of her alarms. So I drive.

\--------------

**AR**

“Can we stop? Please?” Lanchen sticks out her bottom lip and he agrees. He’s a sucker, her muscle bound companion. And she doesn’t even know his real name, or where he’s from, or even how old he is. Or what he’s thinking. Luckily he’s simple.

He’s thinking maybe the break will be good, maybe she’ll suck him off with that lip.

“Okay. Next exit.”

“Yay!” she claps.

“Why do you want to go ahead of them, again? I thought we were trying to kill them. Vegas? That dog and all that meat we left outside the mall to draw the biters? And they still got away.”

“If we can get to his family first, tell them that she’s bad for him, maybe they won’t let her in when they get there.”

“Sooooo, basically you just want to kill her.” His voice is tight, his meaty hands are turning white on the steering wheel. “Do you love him, Lanchen?”

“No! I mean, yeah, as a friend. Just as a friend.” She hasn’t told him yet, but she has every intention of cutting his bumbling ape ass loose when they get to the cabin. So she kisses him, and she can handle his sloppy kisses and his selfish sex, as long as she knows it’s only for a little while longer.

When she’d picked him up in LA, he was one of Austin’s thugs. She doesn’t even know his real name. His nickname is Thor. Austin wasn’t happy about losing him either, after Vanessa. Another thing she can blame this bitch for. She goes back and forth, between blaming Josh for not saving her and blaming this girl for taking her place.

They’re headed Northwest on 1-40, making decent time. He only asks for road head once. And he only demands it one other time.

“Do you even know where this place is? Once we get there?” he asks.

“Um... yeah. I think so. I only went there once. But I know someone who knows for sure.”

“Who is that?”

“You don’t know her.”

He looks at her. “Like I know any of these people.”

“Fine. Her name’s Shannon. She’s Josh’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Ooooh, she’s not going to like the Karate girl.”

“Who does? Josh is crazy.”

“I bet she fucks like a wildcat though.”

“Fuck you, asshole!” She hits him as hard as she can on the shoulder.

“What? I bet she does.”

“Well, by the time I’m done, no one will like her. And you can fuck her corpse if you want.”

“Only if it’s still warm.”

\-----------

I feel crazy. I think a word, I try to say it, and when it reaches my mouth it does nothing like what what I want it to.

I can't make any sound I recognize.

What I think: This is so frustrating.

What I hear: Noises.

They’re sympathetic. But they don’t understand anymore than I do why I can’t talk.

But I can scream. I’m unable to speak in my dreams either. It’s like the ability has simply been wiped from my brain. I try until I cry, until I scream. The things I won’t do when I’m awake. I wake with my throat paralyzed, my voice not loud enough to express what I'm feeling. Josh is too good to me. He gets impatient, when I can’t communicate. But that’s it. It’s hard for me to ask for help, so this is difficult. I don’t want to write out that I need to pee. I don’t want to have to write out that I’m scared and his arms around me are the only thing keeping me from throwing myself out of the car.

Sam seems legit. Government conspiracies that would have made me roll my eyes three months ago have now been proven real. I’m living proof. I wonder how old he is. What his story is. He and Josh talk, but it’s usually in hushed voices because they think I'm asleep, or I really am asleep. I don’t get to ask him the questions I want to ask. There are more important things.

I feel more and more like myself all the time. Every time I wake up I have a little bit more of myself. Everything except my voice.

I’m worried. I have no idea what I’ll do if I can never speak again. I try to remember what my last words were, and I can’t even remember. I could ask Josh, but I know he doesn’t want to think about that day. He wants to move forward, work with what we’ve got. He really seems genuinely happy that I’m still around. He could have gone on, without me. Hecould have made it. I really think so. But he doesn’t.

He gives me too much credit. His survival. When really he's the one keeping me alive.


	17. | TX/KY |

 

**TX**

Communication is very difficult. I hate writing things out.

The basics are easy. I pantomime eating if I’m hungry. Drinking when I’m thirsty. Pretend my hands are a pillow if I’m tired. Needing to relieve myself was a little harder. Scrambling for a pen and paper when you have to stop is really annoying. And you can’t really do the pee dance sitting down. When I got my period and needed to stop and find some kind of pharmacy, forget it. I had to write it out. I’m sure I blushed a fairly furious shade of red. I used the three month pill, but it still happened four times a year. And I was due. It’s just as well. Getting it on with Sam around is... uncomfortable. Just kissing goodnight feels weird when you have an audience, even one that doesn’t look.

We worked out a code for bathroom stops. Code Green = I could go. Code Yellow = I need to stop. Code Black = my eyeballs are floating. So I point at something that’s the right color. Eventually I find scraps of fabric and a sewing kit and sew the colors onto my sleeves.

Basics. Other things are harder. It’s like a horrific and constant game of charades. Josh finds it horrifyingly hilarious sometimes, which doesn't help. 

\---------------

She's doing well, considering. Coming to terms with her new limitations.

We’ve stopped for the night outside a small town in Texas. Sam takes watch on the roof. It’s an unseasonably warm night, and he wants to give us some privacy, I think. We haven't fooled around since before the attack. She hasn't been strong enough and it just hasn't been something that's crossed our minds. Okay it hasn't been something that's crossed her mind. She hasn't given me any signals. 

I don't expect anything to happen, and I’m surprised when she elbows me playfully. She has that look in her eye. The one that makes my pants tight. I know what she’s thinking. But I might make her work for it.

She bites her lip and smiles. I don’t know if she even knows what she’s doing. It doesn’t seem calculated or manipulative. It’s just what she wants. I keep my face blank though, enjoying the show. When I don’t react, she frowns. Uncertain. She lies there for a moment, looking up at the ceiling, trying to think of a way to communicate. She could just jump me. I half expect that she will, but she sighs in frustration.

I throw her a bone. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugs and sighs. She brings her hands up to her forehead and makes a pair of horns. Horny. I have trouble keeping a straight face.

“Evil?” She rolls her eyes and thinks again. She looks at me, _You fucking know what I want._  

 

I do. But this is too much fun. I shrug innocently, feigning confusion. She's frustrated. She tries several things, ending with making a circle with her thumb and forefinger and poking her finger through it. She looks so uncertain now, so embarrassed, I have to let her off the hook. She's about to give up, I can tell. 

“I’m just messing with you,” I laugh. She holds up a very specific finger, trying to decide whether to be legitimately angry or to give in so she can get what she wants. I laugh and pull her hips towards me. “Fuck me, huh?” She nods vigorously, sarcastically, and punches me in the gut. Hard. “Oww! Okay, I got it!” I laugh and grab her fists. “I deserved that. I know.” I pull her to me. “Next time just climb on and ride the ride, baby.” She rolls her eyes again. She twists her hand and takes mine with both of hers, pulling it to the flat plane of her belly, pushing down, under the front edge of her pants. She pushes my fingers down over the hill and into the valley, her middle finger pushing mine between, to the spot she wants me to touch.

I’ve never wanted to kiss her so badly. I want to say so many things to her, because either of us could be gone in the blink of an eye. But right now I’m the one who can’t speak. So I kiss her. The conversation goes something like this. I pull her bottom lip between mine, sucking gently at first, then harder, pulling her face to me with my free hand. _I don’t want to lose you._ She regroups, opens my mouth with her tongue and seeks the depths frantically. _I’ll never sleep again, if I have to,_ it says. I give her mine, mirroring her movements as they slip against each other, soft and wet and desperate. _I need you._ Her mouth is a force, _I’m here,_ she says. Her hands punctuate her intent with a firm grip on the outside of my pants, which doesn’t need translation.

We pick up speed and she pushes me down and pins me to the carpet. My hand is still trapped quite happily in her pants. She holds my face in her hands and kisses me, greedy and hard and I respond by pushing my finger all the way into her, making her groan softly into my mouth.

She grabs her pants and slips them off, taking her underwear with them, pulling the blanket over us. I unzip my pants and she reaches in to find what she wants. I’m not wearing underwear and she grunts her approval as my cock springs free. She nudges my jeans down around my thighs and straddles my hips, shaft in hand as she gives it a few quick strokes, rubbing my head between her folds. I scramble for a condom and roll it on quickly. She’s patient. I’m not.

She sinks down onto me slowly and sits up, using her thigh muscles and leverage alone to rise and sink slowly, throwing her head back and then snagging my eyes and not letting go. I reach under her shirt and roll her nipples between my index and middle fingers, and she wants to go faster, harder. But she doesn’t want to rock the boat, so to speak. So she eases down slowly and squeezes hard with her walls as she rises again, milking me, twisting and swiveling in slow, deliberate circles. I’m not going to last long. She doesn’t either, as she gasps and fastens her mouth to mine, as we swallow each other’s sounds, as she trembles and pulses on top of me.

She collapses onto my chest, her breath hot on that spot just below and behind my ear, the sweet one. A whisper passes my lips before I can think.

“God, I love you.”

I feel her body stiffen and she rolls off of me, pulling on her pants quickly. She climbs into the corner and sits there, arms wrapped around her legs, glaring at me.

I don’t know what to do so I just roll over, but I can still feel her eyes.  
 **  
\----------------**

After a few minutes he rolls back over. “What? What did I say?”

_REALLY? YOU KNOW WHAT._ I cock my head and glare at him.

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry. I...I didn’t mean to say it out loud, anyway.” He’s angry. Vulnerable. He pulls off the condom and bucks his hips, pulling his pants up. He slips on his jacket and opens the side door, swinging up onto the roof to join Sam on watch.

Angry tears nettle my eyes. He doesn’t understand. I’m not upset that he said it. Well, a little. He did put me on the spot. It wasn’t fair. But I understand that he feels it. I understand that he didn’t mean to say it.

Mostly I’m just angry that I can’t say it back.

**\--------------**

**KY  
Shannon**

We’re preparing for assault. There are fourteen of us. Only six of them. They have high ground, but we have numbers, greed and rage on our side.

Just a few more days and we’ll have all the firepower we need to take the cabin.

A truck pulls up outside that we don’t recognize. But I recognize its passenger. We go way back, Lanchen and I.

“Hey girl!” She ignores the guns and comes straight at me.

“It’s fine, guys, she’s cool.” I wave them off. They relax a little, but not too much. “Lanchen!” I run out to greet her. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to know where the cabin is,” she says quietly.

“Why?” I stop dead in my tracks.

“I know where Josh is. And he’ll be here soon.”

**\----------------  
TX**

I don’t say anything to Sam, and he doesn’t ask any questions. He can tell something happened, but he doesn’t pry.

Dawn breaks eventually, and I hope she’s slept, because somewhere out there is a rooster that won’t shut the fuck up. It only gets louder as the sun rises.

“Where the fuck is it?” I can imagine the undead ears perking, heads jerking at the sound. Coming our way.

We’re out in the open, but we’re close to a farm house. “We should just move.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say.

I swing down and into the driver’s seat. I don’t even look back to see if she’s awake, the sting is still far too fresh, I don’t need any salt in my wounds. Sam gets into the passenger seat. He does glance back, nodding. She’s awake. I turn the key, my lips pressed tightly together. Now I can feel the eyes on the back of my head. But nothing happens. Click. Nothing.

“FUCK! The battery is dead. How is the battery dead?”

Sam shrugs. “We’ve either got to find another vehicle or a new battery.”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck!” I slam my hands against the steering wheel. The rooster raises its voice to compete with me. “Shut the fuck up!” I scream out the window, my frustration peaked.

I hear the door slam right behind me.

Fuck. Shit. Damn. Hell. And fuck again.

I look over, she’s striding off at maximum speed. I have to go after her. I have to help her.

It’s what we do.

\------------

“Roxie! Roxie, wait!” I hear him hiss from behind me. I don’t slow down. It doesn’t matter. He jogs up to catch me. It doesn’t take long. He’s not even close to out of breath. Athletic bastard.

I turn my head to look at him. What.

“I’m coming with you.” It’s a statement. It’s clear that I won’t be able to argue. “Maybe I can find that fucking rooster and shoot it.”

I turn and start walking, and grin despite myself.  
  
\--------------

KY

She shows up on foot, out of nowhere, covered in blood and dirt, with some older scars, but no fresh wounds.

She’s an old family friend. Of course they let her in. But I don’t like the look of her, the way she smiles doesn’t seem real or nice at all.

And worst of all, Connor seems excited to see her. They all hug and chatter away for a long time. Michelle and my mom make dinner. We eat. She gets a room. But I don’t trust her. How did she get here on foot? From California? She says she was with Josh and that they got separated and agreed to meet back here. And that they’d met some girl that was apparently using Josh for something or other. I didn’t listen. I didn’t care. I watch Connor’s face while they all talk and he glances over at me occasionally and nods, like there is nothing wrong.

But there is something wrong with her.

In particular, the bite shaped scar on her ankle. She’s wearing a pair of studded denim shorts. I don’t know who sets off on a trip across the country during the fucking apocalypse wearing studded denim shorts and survives.

I want to know. Later I ask Amanda and she just says, “That’s Lanchen,” and shrugs.

Andre is a little cold, but he tells me later that they have had conflicts in the past. Connor seems to adore her, so I don’t even bother with him. Michelle and Chris seem wary, but when I find out she and Josh used to date, and that Lanchen had been pining for him for years, I understand that. Michelle doesn’t like anyone Josh used to date, apparently. Even if she did at one point, if they broke his heart, they’re dead to her. But she tells my mom that Lanchen is harmless.

We’ll see, I think.

“So, Lanchen. Tell us about this girl that Josh is with?” Michelle’s voice has one of those edges to it. The kind that makes everyone want to scramble for cover.

Lanchen has been disturbingly vague and tight lipped about everything. She won't say how she left LA, who she left with or how she got here. It's too hard to talk about, she says. Or I'll tell you later, can we get something to eat? No one won't feed that girl. She's a fucking rail. She has said only one thing for sure, and she won't say how she knows that, even. Josh is currently with a strange girl that none of them know, and she doesn't like her. 

“Oh, you know. She’s just some bitch from LA. A nobody. Well, I guess everybody’s a nobody now.” She laughs harder than she should at her own joke. When no one else gives her more than a courtesy laugh, she clears her throat and moves on. “Her name is Roxie or some stupid stripper name like that.”

“Like your name is perfectly normal, Lawn Chair,” I say under my breath. Lanchen shoots me a look, but doesn’t say anything. It’s not her fault, I tell myself. It’s her parents’. At least that’s what my mom tells me later. Amanda let Lanchen’s undesirable nickname slip and I haven’t been calling her anything else since.

No other details are forthcoming, as she dances around every question like a prima ballerina. She always ends up drawing them into some kind of reminiscence, or some distraction, or some crazy subject change. No one can get any details, but she talks and talks and talks around in circles and acts like she's telling us everything.

  
**\------------**

**TX**

“Roxie, wait.” He grabs my shoulder and pulls me to a stop. “Look at me, please.”

I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want him to see what I can’t say. I don’t want to be weak, ever again. Behind him an ambler is slowly making its way towards us. I nod at it and he turns around, sighs heavily and pulls the gun, nailing it between the eyes.

I return my attention to his face, and my efforts at hiding everything I’m feeling except the irritation. The rooster isn’t helping.

“That fucking rooster!” he grumbles through clenched teeth. I turn and start to walk away, thinking that he’s done, he’s distracted, we have to move on anyway.

“No! No. Don’t walk away,” he says. “Look. I’m sorry I said what I said. I am. I didn’t mean... I mean... I did mean... but..." I do a quick scan for immediate danger, then I reel him in by the collar of his jacket and kiss him. It’s a message, not a conversation.

_Shut up. I love you too._

I release him and leave him there, stunned. We really do have to find another vehicle. Fast. I have no idea where the rooster is, or when it showed up, but already I see three... four zombies and they’re all two legged. No crippled or broken legs. No dragging. They’re headed for the noise, and we seem to be right in their path.  
  
\-------------

KY  
Andre

We don’t get a lot of action for a few days. With the exception of our new houseguest. I say guest, but she’s probably angling for long term residency. And there’s no reason why we wouldn’t give it to her. Except for the fact that she’s up to no fucking good. Terra sees it. Amanda has suspicions. I don’t know if anyone else does, but it’s plain as day, plain as the scar on her leg. She’s been bitten. Either by a fully aware cannibal, or by a zombie. And survived.

She has a story to tell, and I mean to get it out of her.


	18. 17 | TX/KY and between

**TX**

We look around for options. Now there are five, six headed directly for us. They were drawn by the rooster, but now they’ve fixed their rotten eyes and clotted senses on us. Their necks snap at odd angles and if they had any grace in life it’s long gone as the tendrils in their brains harvest the energy of decay and poke and prod at the most base functions. Their eyes roll in their dry sockets, the vitreous humor cloudy gray and green and sometimes black, attempting to see us. Their sense of smell seems to be the most useful. I’m sure we smell very alive. Like unwashed bodies and pheromones.

I glance back at Sam in the truck. He’s fine. He can more than take care of himself, with the box and his shotgun. We don’t use the box too much, it runs on batteries and those are not exactly being manufactured anymore. We’re too far away for him to use it to help us. But he’ll turn it on if the truck gets overrun. 

We look around for a place to hide. I start trying doorknobs and kicking doors but nothing is giving. 

"Pssst!" 

I look around. Maybe I'm hearing things. But she seems to be hearing the same thing. 

"Hey! Guys!" Our heads both swivel the same direction at the same time. "Yes, you." A small blonde woman is standing in the doorway of a boarded up house, waving us toward her. "Come on. Quick." 

We don't argue, and move fast and duck into the house. Who are we to argue when a woman with a shotgun offering us shelter? 

She eyes me. "Do I know you? You look familiar." 

"Um, I was an actor." 

"Oh yeah! My niece had your poster in her room." I blush and look down. I still do that, out of habit. It actually feels kind of real this time. 

"Anyway, would you like some tea? Sorry we don't have any coffee. It's unbelievably hard to get those trees to grow in an arid environment and the greenhouse isn't up yet. And even if we had one it would be a few years until I could harvest…" she pauses, "…but you don't care about that." 

Roxie looks at me, eyes pleading. She mentioned once that she missed good tea. "I think she wants tea." She nods vigorously. "Sorry, she just recently lost her voice and we haven't worked out the communication kinks all the way yet." 

"Oh! I'm sorry to hear that! Talking is one of the things that keeps me sane anymore." 

"It's true! She never shuts up!" a very well projected female voice booms from the other room. 

"You stop, CeCe. Don't forget you're at my mercy." She lowers her voice and whispers to us conspiratorially. "That's my cousin. She fell and broke her leg a few months ago. Tibia, fibula, and ankle. They put in three plates and a lot of pins. She's diabetic too, so she can't be moved. It would be too hard on her system or we would have been out of here a long time ago." 

"Bring them in here! I want to meet the people! We never get to see people!" CeCe calls from the other room. Even out of sight, her presence and voice fill up the house. 

"I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Janalee." She leads us into the other room, where a woman in a wheelchair sits smiling at us. Her hair is wild and gray and her body matches her voice. Large. Tall and broad, even sitting down. She's nearly the exact opposite of the neat and tiny woman who led us in. 

She holds out her hand. "I'm CeCe. I'm sorry, I look like such a mess. We never get company. And we weren't exactly expecting any ever again!" 

"You're fine!" I grin and shake. "It is the end of the world. Perfect zombie apocalypse chic." 

She clasps my hand with both of hers. "Thank you! I like you!" she laughs. 

She nods at Roxie and releases my hand. "Sit down! Somewhere. Please. Just move those magazines around…" the room is littered with papers and books and exotic knick knacks, but we find a spot on a sofa. 

"How are you guys surviving here? Did you have preps?" I really want to know.

Janalee returns with two steaming, delicate looking but completely different cups on saucers and hands them to us. "Sorry we are fresh out of milk. But there are sugar cubes on the saucer if you take sugar." She moves some papers off a chair and sits down. "But to answer your question I would have to take you on the tour. We have a pretty extensive garden and some chickens and goats. And the dogs. But we don't eat the dogs. They don't actually contribute much, do they?" she looks at CeCe and they both laugh. "We were already crazy old spinster hippies before everything went to hell. Renewable and local. And what's more local than your own backyard? When you finish your tea, if you're interested, I'll show you. But what brings you here? We've been the only ones in this town for over a month. Well, us and Phil." 

"Who is Phil?" 

"Phil is a pain in the ass. If you can find him, you're welcome to eat him." I look at her, confused. She holds a finger up to her lips, shushing us. The only sound we can hear is the damn rooster. "Hear that?" 

"I can't hear anything but that rooster." 

She nods and rolls her eyes. "That would be Phil. He was the neighbor's, but they left him behind. Can you imagine? A rooster that crows twenty four hours a day being a liability when you're trying to escape a zombie horde?" She laughs. "They loved that bastard but in the end they left him. Somehow he's managed to survive. It's the end of the world and after we're gone there will only be cockroaches and Phil." She laughs again, but her face is weary. "I have wasted so much ammo on the number of undead he brings to our doorstep. So really, you're welcome to make a meal of him if you can find him. I haven't been able to catch him because my knees are bad and I don't want to take any chances jumping around trying to get him. I don’t dare let the dogs out because they could get eaten. I wish they’d eat Phil. We could use another rooster, if he'd just shut up. But he won't." 

"Well, that was one of our goals. Our truck is dead. We're looking for transportation and that rooster's swift and painful death." 

Janalee and CeCe look at each other, communicating silently. "We're not going to need it," CeCe says. "I'm not going anywhere." 

Janalee slaps her knees. "Okay then. I think I have the perfect thing for you. On the condition that you find Phil. We really can't afford to keep using up our ammo because of that little shit." She stands up. "Come with me." 

Their house, it turns out, is set up like a medieval church with a cloister. Set up in a square and completely closed in, there's a large open space in the center with a huge vegetable garden, fruit trees, a rain catchment system, windmills, the chickens and goats, and two tiny dogs. One fluffy and small and white and one dark and stocky. The fluffy one yaps at us for a few minutes, baring his tiny teeth. “Hush, Peaches! They’re friends!” Janalee scolds. “Go to CeCe!” He doesn’t seem convinced but he turns and goes anyway when CeCe (whose hearing is apparently eagle-like) calls him. The dark one ambles along behind us quietly for the remainder of our stay. 

Our host leads us to one side of the building, opening up a door to what appears to be a garage. "My father was a mechanic, a sailor, and..." she starts to explain as our eyes adjust to the light--we see several vehicles:  a Smart Car, a little Fiat, a fishing boat, a beat up truck, and at the opposite end-- Janalee continues, "…an armored car driver." 

We stop dead in our tracks and high five. 

"It's perfect." 

"Bring me that rooster's head and it's yours." 

Four hours, some bumps and bruises and a few brushes with the undead later we're sitting at their table eating roasted chicken and vegetables. We recruited Sam to help, and it took awhile, but we finally managed to trap Phil in a shed. Sam twisted his neck and the world was blissfully silent. 

We thank them for the food and their exceptional generosity and hit the road with renewed energy, faith in humanity, and a fucking armored truck. There is no stopping us now. Three states to go and I'll be home. 

\------------

We sleep in the back of the truck and drive in shifts, and it’s Sam’s turn. We go almost non-stop and have no problems, unless you count Roxie’s growing uncertainty about meeting my family. She won’t tell me anything. She won’t write anything about it, but it’s all over her face. She’s antsy and her mouth is pinched closed, she refuses to look at me. She won’t let me touch her. She’s uncomfortable. And by that I mean I am unable to comfort her in any way. 

I hand her the paper and pencil. “Tell me,” I demand. 

You’re famous. I’m not. 

“Neither of us is famous anymore.” 

I remember what you said about your mom not liking anyone. 

“That’s not true. She likes  _me_.” 

She drops her head onto her knees and groans. 

“Hey, hey. Don’t worry about it. They’re going to love you. What option do they have?” I laugh and she gives me a look that says laser beams and fire. 

She starts writing and doesn’t stop for awhile. I wait patiently. This is what I’d hoped she’d do. Open up a little. Sometimes I have no idea what’s going on in her head. 

_**My full name is Roxanne Alicia Winn. My parent’s names were Lupe and Peter. My mom was from Spain. My dad was American. My mom was a devout Catholic, and my dad just went along so she didn’t yell, but his family was Irish Catholic and Chinese.  I don’t believe in anything. Especially now. My mom taught me how to feel guilty, but I only bother with remorse. Guilt is useless. I don’t like snakes or socks on the floor.** _

_**I used to compete in martial arts. I also took gymnastics, Krav Maga and Capoeira. I read a lot. I never went to the movies. I’m sorry that I haven’t seen any of yours. I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid. My favorite color is that between color that’s both brown and purple. I love sushi. I miss sushi. I’m never going to have sushi again, am I?** _

She hands it over and waits until I’m finished reading, rocking back and forth and biting her nails. 

“So you could hear me? When I was talking to you in the back of the truck?” 

She nods and takes the pad back, writes, and hands it back to me. 

_**It’s not all clear, but I remember you saying you didn’t know my last name and that you’re sorry you pulled the trigger. You know if you hadn’t I wouldn’t trust you anymore, right?**  _

I’m shocked. I hadn’t actually thought about it that way. That I had done what I needed to do, and that she would find that comforting. She takes back the paper again, thinking of something else. 

_**It was like drowning. I could hear you, like you were above the water and I was underneath. But I couldn’t open my eyes and I couldn’t make my voice work. She shakes her head at herself as she writes this sentence, as if she’s frustrated with the obvious. I couldn’t see but I could hear you. I was scared. More scared than I have ever been. I hate being scared. I hate that you saw me like that. I hate that you had to baby me.**  _

“Seriously? You think almost dying and coming back and letting me take care of you is ‘babying’”? 

She nods. 

“No. It’s not. And it’s not weakness, either. Maybe physically at first you were weak but look how far you’ve come.” She grabs at her throat in frustration. “I know. I know that’s not back yet. But we’re working things out, right?” 

She nods again in resignation. 

“Do you need a hug?” 

Her answer is a single finger in what has come to be her favorite nonverbal communication. But after a few minutes she crawls over next to me and bumps my shoulder with hers. Which is Roxie Sign Language for “Hug me before I change my mind.” So I do. I hold her until it’s my turn to drive. 

\------------

**KY**

I see Andre first, ambling out to meet us. He’s thin but still quite a menacing presence if you don’t know that he’s all soft on the inside. But like my mother, nobody fucks with me and gets away with it when he’s around. Not even me. His face runs a quick range of emotions when he sees me through the windshield, everything from threatening to recognition to disbelief and finally he breaks into a wide grin and runs to the gate to unlock it. 

“GO GET MICHELLE!” he screams at the woman on the deck. 

Then everything explodes into a whirlwind of emotion and activity. Tackle hugs and long tight mom hugs and screaming and jumping and a non-stop stream of voices that have too much to say too quickly. I introduce an overwhelmed Roxie and Sam and explain quickly that Roxie can’t talk and vaguely who Sam is and where is Dad and oh hey, strangers. Someone suggests we go in the house before we draw any unwanted undead visitors with our noise. 

The two women I don’t know volunteer to go on watch while we catch up. Mom pulls me aside quickly and says that there’s someone else here. Someone I might be surprised to see. 

But when we get inside there’s no one but Dad. 

“Where’s Lanchen?” Michelle asks. 

I stop dead in my tracks. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, baby,” she says. 

“Who? Who did you say was here?” I choke out. 

“Lanchen. She got here a few days ago. She said you were..." Gears are turning in her head, I can almost see them as her eyes turn to steel. "Why?” 

“I saw her die, mom. I saw her dragged away from my garage, screaming.  Biters had her by the ankle.” 

“Well, she didn’t die, she was here," she says through tight lips and a clenched jaw.

Sam steps forward. “Wait, did you say Lanchen? Skinny blonde girl? About this tall?” He gestures about the right height. 

“Yeah...” 

“I think I know what happened.” 

“What. The hell.” I need to sit down. I reach for the nearest sofa. This is unfuckingbelievable. 

Sam explains that soldiers from their program picked her up limping down the street, disoriented and bitten and about to pass out and die. They gave her the antiviral and brought her back to Colorado. It was that or let her die and turn. She was the only civilian non-volunteer they’d ever found who’d been bitten and hadn’t turned yet. They were anxious to test the virus on someone non-program and Dr. Edwards absolutely drew the line at infecting non-volunteers. So she went to Colorado and came out of the lab with Dr. Edwards when he escaped. Sam didn’t know what had happened to her or Dr. Edwards after that, after the phones went down. 

“I guess she made her way back here,” Sam says. 

“Yeah,” Andre pipes up, “but how did she know about Roxie? How did she find us? Did she ever come here? I can’t remember. Josh?” 

“She did. Once. With...with me and a friend.” 

“With Shannon, you mean,” my mother’s voice is full of venom. 

I hang my head. So she knows. “I’m sorry, mom. It was a long time ago. A lifetime ago.” 

“You should have told me.” 

“I know.” It all hangs heavy in the room. My mistake. I can feel everything from confusion (from Roxie) to annoyance (the younger stranger) and the white hot anger from my mother, that I know I'll have to deal with later. For now she decides to let it go.

“Okay. Well, let’s deal with what we know. Shannon is out there, gathering who knows what to come here and try again," she says. 

“Try what again?” 

“Last week she showed up with a couple of trucks full of guys and tried to take the cabin. Whatever you two...  _had_ , she is clearly not feeling it anymore.” 

“She was pretty angry the last time.” It was true. She was sad, and full of directionless bitterness and anger. She blamed me for turning my fans against her, she blamed my mother for turning me against her, she blamed people on the internet, she blamed everyone but herself. 

Amanda shuffles through the keys on the hooks by the refrigerator. “Um, I hate to interrupt, but who has the extra keys to the gate and the front door?” 

Shit.  



	19. 17.5 | KY

 

"Can I talk to you?" He whispers in my ear. He sounds irritated.

"Um, yeah. You're talking."

"Alone?!?" Now he really sounds irritated. He flips a quick look around the room, his eyes landing last on Sam.

"Sure! Sounds like so much fun!" I chirp sarcastically, swiveling on the barstool and getting up to follow him down the hallway to the doorway if his room.

"What is it with that guy? Sam?" He hisses, his arm up over my head, leaning into me without touching. The way he says his name sounds like junior high all over again.

"What? Are you jealous?" His cheeks flush and he looks away. "Oh my god, you are!"

"I'm not! Not really. I just want to know what his... intentions are."

I can't help it. I hug him, hard. "You are so sweet, Connor."

"What? What does that mean?" He pushes me away defensively.

"Connor," I chide.

"Terra," he mocks.

"Sam is gay."

He does a double take. "What?"

"Sam. Is so gay."  I pause, waiting for him to catch up. "He's been trying to catch Andre's attention all day. He finds me nonthreatening, so he's telling me everything he wants to tell Andre. Really loud. You're intercepting the signal, dude."

His face goes blank. Realization dawns. Then embarrassment. Then more realization. "Oooh..." I run my thumbs over the flush in his cheeks. They're hot to the touch.

"You need to get your gaydar checked." I smile, and I know it's reflecting some insecurity. "Does this mean you like me?"

"Shit. You know how I feel about you."

"Do I? It's always nice to hear."

He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me to him possessively. I melt into him and he gets brave, going below the belt with both hands to grab my ass firmly. "I like you. A lot," he groans. "A lot a lot. What does this mean? What are we doing?" He whispers into my hair.

"Being together?" I wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips into his skin. He sighs and squeezes me hard, his face pulling back to search mine. We don't really need any more words. My lips are his and he takes them, hungrily. I don't mind.

He pulls me through the doorway and closes the solid wood door, pressing me up against it, lifting me. I wrap my legs around him and sigh, electricity running up and down my spine. He's still kissing me, and I can feel his stubble scraping against my face and his arousal pressing into the heat between my legs. I've never felt anything like it. It's intoxicating.

"We should..." I pull away for a second but he reclaims my lips and takes my breath.

"We should what?" he gasps when he needs air.

"We shouldn't be too long or they'll get suspicious."

"Who cares?" He dives back in. His lips are divine, and when he slips his tongue into the mix I lose my sense of time and float off somewhere with him, somewhere far away and very sweet.

The knock on the door startles us both.

We unwind our bodies quickly and straighten ourselves, wiping our lips as if we can erase any evidence. He grimaces and pushes at his erection with the heel of his hand, but he's just moving it around. He sighs and sits down in the desk chair behind him.

"Connor? Terra? You guys okay in there?"

"We're fine mom!" He mouths to me _Do you think she saw?_

"Okay, you just left so quickly. Can I come in?"

_Yeah, she saw._ I mouth back.

"It's okay, we'll be right out. We're fine," he says.

"Connor." Her tone is suddenly stern. "Open the door please."

He nods and I reach over, open it and jump back, trying to stay calm.

She walks through the door and eyes us both carefully, taking note of swollen lips and hands crossed over laps.

"See? We're fine."

She's not buying it, but she knows we can't have gotten very far in such a short amount of time.

"Just come back out to the living room. Everyone is wondering."

"Be right there," he smiles. She looks us both over again and I get the message. She walks out, leaving the door open. He ducks behind it and pulls me to him again, arms around my waist. "Together?” he says and kisses me quickly one more time.

"Together," I smile.

He takes my hand and neither of us lets go as we walk out, no fucks given **.**


	20. | KY |

"Oh, my god! I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again!” My mother pulls me into a hug so tight it threatens to take away my breath, releasing a sob I’m sure she’s been holding for months now, not allowing herself to give in to despair. My dad joins her and now I really can’t breathe. 

“Ungh!” I protest. “Smooshing me!” I feel like a toddler all of a sudden. That’s what they see, anyway. Their baby.

“Sorry honey,” mom lets up on her death grip, rubbing my shoulders and kissing my cheek. “I’m just so happy to see you!”

“Me too,” Dad growls and rocks me from side to side, not willing to let go quite yet. “Grrrrr. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“Do what? Live in LA? Done!” I laugh.

We move to the sofas in the living area, and I have to convince my mother to let go of my hand. “I’m real, mom! I’m not going anywhere, I swear!”

“Sorry, I just...”

“I know. I love you too.”

“So. Tell us everything. How did you get here? And how did you meet Roxie?” There’s just the slightest touch of distaste at her name. Maybe not distaste. Wariness. Suspicion on my behalf.

“She’s amazing, mom. You have no idea.”

“What happened to her? To her voice?”

“I’ll get to that. Do you want me to start at the beginning or not?” She laughs and nods.

I tell her everything, from the beginning. I don’t even leave out the cemetary sex, although I do use as few words as possible. And I figure she doesn’t need to know the details of our night in Vegas.

I tell her about the bite in New Mexico, and how I would have shot her, and how Sam showed up. I don’t believe in fate, but there was some kind of spectacular luck at work.

“So she’s immune? To the virus?”

“Yeah. Which means Lanchen is too. I don’t know if she knows that though.”

“She didn’t mention it.” There’s a bitter edge in her voice that could slice steel. “But anyway. Roxie. She seems...nice.”

I laugh. Nice is probably not the first word I’d use to describe her. “She kicks some ass, that’s for sure.”

“So are you guys...together?”

“Yeah, mom. We’ve been through a lot. Together.” I pause. “She’s staying with me, in my room.”

My mother’s face. As “cool” a mom as she has always been, girls have always been her kryptonite. She’d let me party and smoke up and drink as long as I was in a safe environment or with someone she trusted, but for some reason the idea of her baby having sex just gets under her skin.

I’ve prepared all my arguments. We need the beds. We can save water by showering together. (She actually shuddered at this.) Finally I just said it’s my house and I’m twenty fucking three years old. I explained to both of them Roxie’s feelings about pregnancy and the precautions that we take. I don’t know what we’ll do in two years, but by then maybe we can find a condom factory and figure out how that shit gets done. Surely there’s a diaphragm out there somewhere that has a longer shelf life. But like I said. We’d worry about that later.

“Do you love her?”

“Yeah, mom. I love her. I know it’s early and I know I always say it too soon and I know that relationships that happen under stress might not have the best chances but really, when are we not going to be under stress? Where do I go to meet women now? I know no one’s ever good enough for you guys but trust me, she’s good enough.”

“Okay,” she said, resigned. “I’ll give her a chance.”

“Thanks mom.”

“But you clean your own sheets.”

\-----------

Terra and I quickly work out a system of nonverbal communication. It consists of a Morse code-like collection of eyerolls and heavy sighs. We understand one another perfectly. She teaches me and Josh the alphabet in ASL. So now I can sign out “F-u-c-k y-o-u!” but I still prefer the succinct and efficient middle finger.

We share a bed and a shower. Which took some logistical gymnastics with his mother, but in the end he basically said “I’m a big boy.” Josh’s room is understandably one of the nicest in the house, and features a king size bed, a view, and a bathroom with hot running water. If I never appreciated the luxury of a shower before, I am never going to take it for granted again. Even with time restrictions. We shower together, so we use both our allotted times just this once. We don’t waste any time with sex, we spend all our time soaping each other up and finding all the places that haven’t been clean in months. When we're done we’re raw and squeaky as little mice. We crawl into bed that first night and fall immediately into sleep. Safe and warm.

Besides a frantic encounter that started and ended with reaching for each other in the middle of the night we waited until the next morning to explore one another’s clean bodies. We’d never seen each other completely dirt free before. He cleans up nicely, although he still didn’t shave off his stubble.

\-----------------

Roxie is awesome.

“You’re awesome,” I tell her, after she teaches me some self defense moves. “I don’t know what Lanchen’s problem was.”

She looks pissed and signs out how did she know about me.

“She said that you guys were all traveling together.” Roxie looks shocked and confused, as she shakes her head. No. Clearly they weren’t. She thinks for awhile and then signs out ask Josh and points to herself. She’ll ask Josh.

“I didn’t like her. And not just because I was jealous. I was a little bit, because she knew them all so well. Connor especially.”

She punches me on the arm and smiles. After our little show of handholding Connor had several long and private conversations with his mother that he didn’t really want to talk about. Some of which Josh was in on. I suspect they talked about Roxie too, since her and Josh are in the same room together. That didn’t go over well either. Michelle was having a difficult reunion. I didn’t press it. He said “I’m her baby.” As if that explained everything. But she agreed to give us a little space and not to give us shit if we agreed to be safe and not to sneak around or get distracted. We needed to get ready. So that’s what we’ve been doing, ever since they got here.

We really have no idea what to expect but the boys are full of ideas. Chains of nails and shredded steel and tin cans on the road to pop their tires. Change up the schedule so they won’t catch us at a vulnerable time. We sleep in shifts already, but we become much more strict about it.

Roxie wants to know exactly what Lanchen told us. When I told her what she said about Vegas something clicked in her head and she went and got Josh and made me repeat everything I’d just told her.

“Fuck. She must have been the one. Who left the cigarette butts by the bike," he says.

She nods.

“And whatever animal that was, poor thing. To draw the zombies.”

She nods again.

“She tried to kill us.” His voice is hard but also hurt and he doesn’t disguise it.

Roxie pounds on the table in affirmation as he connects all the dots.

“She couldn’t have been alone. How did she figure out where we went? She must have gone back to LA...” he pauses. “Austin.”

 

\-------------------

Twelve hours later it was done. It was all done. And people were dead. People I loved.

They showed up and at least the tire poppers took them by surprise as they spun out into the clearing. One truck rolled down the hill and careened into the lake, but it’s shallow and the only thing they lost was the truck. They pretended to want to talk, but I think that was mostly the girls’ idea. The rest of them humored them, thinking that they’d just have a better shot at us, I’m sure. But Connor had already prepared for this.

While we “negotiated” with Shannon and Lanchen, Connor and Andre took up their camouflaged sniper stations in the trees and started taking people out. Then all hell broke loose.

Lanchen went when she took on Roxie, mistaking her silence for impotence.

“What, is she deaf?”

Roxie answered by looking up at her and slowly shaking her head. Smiling a smile that Lanchen didn't have the intuition to know was a coiled snake, waiting to strike. I wanted to grin, except I didn’t really want to see Lanchen dead. Even despite her misplaced blame and this monumental betrayal.

I was still in shock. "I thought you were dead. I thought..."

"You thought I was dead and it was your fault. You didn't protect me."

"Yes," I choked out.

"We'll it's true."

"Fuck you, Lanchen. I tortured myself for not being able to save you. Every time I closed my eyes your face was there. Screaming. Part if me died when I lost you."

"Aw. That's so sweet." She was only half sarcastic. Part of her was eating this up. It was exactly what she wanted to hear.

"I have no idea who you are though. My Lanchen is dead."

She stared me down. Cold. Maybe like Roxie, she'd lost part of herself to the virus. Except not her voice. Just the part that made her human.

“You never answered my question though. How did you know where to find us in Vegas?”

“We followed you from LA. Fucking in a graveyard. Very kinky, for you.”

I could feel my face getting red. From anger mostly. I know I’m good at fucking. Nothing Lanchen hasn’t seen before anyway. "You would know." I muttered. "And Austin loaned you one of his thugs?” I recognized the smirking lump of muscle that sidled up behind her from the gas station.

“Thor has been very helpful. And his dick is huge.” Roxie rolled her eyes as Thor grabbed his crotch and smiled his oily, acne'd smile.  

“You have something to say, bitch? Come on.” Lanchen was wound up tight. Desperate. Possibly experiencing regret and knowing she wasn't going to win this fight, but it was far too late to go back now.  Roxie gave her the finger and a smile.

“Do that again,” she growled. As if she could take Roxie. She was counting on Thor to back her up but who knew how far his loyalties went?

“Lanchen, you are an idiot.” I’d wanted to say those words for a long time, and they’d been true, but she’d never taken it to this level before.

The look on her face was pitiful. Hurt, anger, fear. She launched herself at me and it happened fast. I saw Roxie’s arm shoot out to intercept as she grabbed Lanchen by the throat. I saw Lanchen hanging in the air, heard the crunch of her windpipe. I saw her struggling to breathe as Roxie released her and she fell to the ground, to her knees, clutching at her throat.

Roxie shrugged at me and turned to leave. She wasn't going to kill her if she didn't have to. Leave her poetically speechless, sure. But she somehow sensed that I had history with this girl and the shrug was both an apology and a declaration. She came to stand behind me, letting me take the lead.

But I recognized the look in Lanchen's eye. She was never going to stop. She was never going to let it go. She was lost, wild. She had no place in this world even though she'd been given an incredible gift. And that was my fault. _I_ didn't save her. It was not a surprise to any of us when she lunged, her white hot eyes focus-less and blood shot.

"Go ahead." I stepped aside and walked away. I had no desire to see even a former friend fall. She choked out something that sounded like my name as Roxie caught her. I heard a crack, and then it was over. I glanced back and Roxie was standing next to Lanchen's crumpled body, staring down Thor, who turned and ran. Like a coward.

\--------

Thor went when he literally ran into Amanda and made the mistake of calling her a lesbo cunt.

She dismantled him before anyone could get near them. For every asshole who'd ever said any idiotic ignorant thing to her. For every woman ever who'd had to deal with meatheads who walked over them like they didn't matter, didn't exist except as a hole to fuck. For every side eye and every broken body and crushed spirit. She took him down like a side of beef, opened him up and showed him what he was inside. Ugly. Cruel. Dead.

The world where he belonged was gone. And now so was he.

\---------

Mom went when I turned my back. When I'd had enough of Shannon's excuses. She honestly believed that I'd slighted her. That I'd robbed her of something. And it wasn't pretty, the way things had ended. But that was no excuse to show up at my house with half the town trying to fucking kill my family. Not an easy thing to defend with my mother standing next to me.

She tried to _kill_ us. She didn't get it. She never would. Her mind was small, it always had been. I just never saw it. I wanted no part of what she had to say to me. So I turned to go and she pulled a gun and my mom stepped between us. I don't know if she forgot she didn't have Wonder Woman bracelets or what. Damn her.

I don't exactly remember how my hands ended up around Shannon's throat, but they did. I don't remember how I shot the people who came to defend her, but I did. Or someone else did. It doesn't matter. They still ended up dead. And so did Shannon. A whole lifetime of love and hate and this was how it ended. Quickly, her eyes swimming with regret and longing as she accepted that I was the one who would finally take everything from her. I don't know what she saw in mine. Maybe she saw everything.

The next thing I knew I was cradling my mom's head and she was bleeding out under my hand that was clamped hard over the gushing wound in the center of her chest. She was telling me the things she needed to say, and that she was sorry, and that she was glad she got to see me again. And that she'd get shot for me a million times if she could. She didn't say anything about Roxie but she looked over at her and something unspoken passed between them. I felt Roxie's surprise like the snap of a rubber band. Then she nodded.

I asked my mother who was going to do my laundry now and she just laughed and lifted her fingers to my cheek and said "Take care of your brother and your father for me, okay? Tell your dad bitches get shit done."  And then she was gone. The light just…went out.

I'd seen fake death a thousand times, as an actor. And this was somehow the same but so very different. She got heavy. So heavy. I shook her and held her head to my chest and said "Cut, mom. Cut. The scene's over," as if somehow I could direct my life and make this unreal just by demanding it. It was time to wake up from the nightmare.

But it didn't happen. I could hear my dad screaming from the deck, I could hear Amanda's piercing fierce howl and I could hear the gunshots, but all through the thick gauze of shock jammed into my ears. I floated through the next however long it was in a rage fueled daze. People came at us and we killed them. And Roxie was beside me, the whole time. Waiting. **  
**  



	21. | KY |

They’re drawn by the noise. When the dust and smoke of the battle with the humans clear, we assess the damage.

A truck went through the fence when it spun out from the tire poppers on the clearing side, leaving a gaping hole and us vulnerable. There’s the truck in the lake, the other vehicles with popped tires. Some got away, but not enough to worry about right now. They may regroup, they may not. They’re cowards. I knew their families. Notorious gossips and sneaky as fuck, but not the type to organize things. We’ll just have to make sure the house is secure at night. There are bodies strewn everywhere. Mostly human, some zombies.

The crowd arrives while we’re digging. We’re already exhausted. We’ve just propped the fence back up, but if they push on it at all, it’s going down again. It’s no longer rooted to the cement weights underground.

I scream at Andre to help me move my mom’s body up to the deck. Everyone is too tired to fight. We have to retreat. We go first, taking her sheet wrapped body up the steps. Everyone else covers us. We have to leave her outside, we can’t take her in the house. Connor pulls up the stairs behind us.

I don’t know what else to do.

\---------

Josh doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t shower, he doesn’t talk. He doesn’t move from the bed. He accepts my arms around him but he doesn't hold me back, he doesn't cry, he doesn't accept my comfort. He lets me hold him, but his lack of resistance is passive. Day two he lets me feed him and make him drink. I can’t talk to him, and I can’t make him read anything I write. He has no patience for signing. I bring Terra in and she reads something for me.

No reaction. Nothing.

Chris, Connor and Amanda aren’t faring much better. Without her, they literally just fall apart, retreating to their own rooms. It’s so unlike the family I met when I got here. But I get it. I understand. So I don’t push it.

We all deal with our frustrations differently. Andre snipes undead. Terra and I work out. Candace cooks and cleans.

We have to deal with Michelle's body. Three days and no zombies have made it inside the perimeter.

"Josh, we're going to bury your mom,” Andre says from the door.

“Go away Andre.” They’re his first words in days.

“Okay but I’m leaving Roxie here to kick your ass and give you a sponge bath.”

I raise my eyebrows at Josh and nod. He pulls the blanket back over his head.

"It's her or me, dude. And I just dunked both Amanda and Connor. I'm getting pretty good." 

"Fine," Josh says from underneath the covers. 

"Fine her or fine me?" Andre asks, his voice a few shades too chipper to not be deadly serious. 

"Her!"

Andre grins and nods at me and I shoo him along and thump the bed beside Josh.

It takes about an hour and a boob flash to lure him out of bed and into the bathroom. I take him by the hand and pull him into the tub fully clothed and and turn the cold water on his head.

“Fuck!” he shrieks. “Roxie what the fuck!” He tries to push his way out the door but I push him back in. He shakes the water from his hair and crosses his arms across his chest, shivering. “Let me out,” he growls. I can see him weighing his options.

I shake my head.

“Let me out, Roxie.” I shake my head again. I step in with him and turn the water off. His teeth are chattering and he is looking murderous. I wrap my arms around him and he resists until I lift the hem of his shirt and pull it up over his head. I smooth my hands down his chest in a long V from his shoulders to the button of his jeans. His eyes flash for the first time in days. I unbutton and unzip him slow, holding his gaze. They fall to the floor and he steps out of them.

He undresses me quietly, studying each part of my body as it’s revealed, as if he barely remembers who I am. When he’s done his hands are large and warm on my hips and he’s on his knees and his head falls forward into my lower belly and his shoulders start to shake.

"I did this," he sobs. "It's my fault." 

I reach over him and turn on the warm water, grab a bar of soap and get down on my knees to meet him. I grab his face and wait for him to submit to my gaze. I shake my head firmly. _No, Josh._ I will him to understand me. His face contorts painfully and I reiterate with my hands, my thumbs in the hollows of his cheeks, my lips on his forehead, my pupils burning into his. He understands. But he hasn't accepted it. Yet. 

He slumps down and lays out lengthwise, hiding his face in his hands as I wash his body. He went straight to bed after the battle. There’s blood and grime for days all over him and it takes awhile.

When he’s clean and rinsed I pull him up to sit and climb into his lap. I let him sob into my shoulder until he can’t anymore and the water starts to run cold. We’ve more than used up our daily allotments, but considering he hasn’t even showered since the battle, I feel like we’ll get away with it.

 

\-------

 

We bury her quickly, without much ceremony. Everyone who’s not family or Andre takes up a weapon and guards us. We find some small things to bury her with, but there aren’t any more flowers.

“She doesn’t mind,” Amanda sniffs as she leans in on Connor, who’s leaning on Chris, who’s leaning on Andre, who's being held up by the slender carbon fiber strength of Sam.

I feel their closeness like a steel wall has slammed down between myself and them. It’s my fault.

_It’s my fault._

I try not to let the words echo through my whole body and poison everything. But in my bones I feel it’s true. Over the last few days I’ve been over every decision in my life that’s led me to this moment, beginning with meeting Shannon.

There are a million different versions of the future that could have played out. But this is the one I’m in. This is the grave I’m standing over.

None of them look at me. Roxie is trying to hold my hand but her comfort is cold right now. I can’t take it anymore. It starts to rain as I’m walking into the house.

I sink into the sofa and time goes by but I don’t feel it. I’m stuck in that moment, in that place where the only thing that’s real is the ache in my heart and the sharp awareness that  there is someone missing. Usually I am able to externalize everything. Internalizing all of this is twisting me up inside until I can't even breathe. 

My sadsturbation is interrupted when Andre and Connor come through the door at some time later carrying a soaking and muddy Candace between them. She’s laughing but her face is contorted ever so slightly.

Concern burns away my moment and I leap to my feet, retrieving a large towel and a blanket from a side closet.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“Oh, I’m fine. My balance is off with this belly and I took an exceptionally graceful nosedive into the ground. I was like a fucking overturned turtle.”

“Oh stop, honey. You’re allowed. You’re walking for two!” Andre reassures her as they deposit her carefully onto the sofa. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need anything?”

“Seriously, stop doting. You’re worse than me!” she protests as she attempts to clean some of the mud off of her front with the towel. “But if you feel like it I could use a glass of water.”

“You got it, mamacita,” he singsongs as he scurries away. I know he's hurting, but he's not letting it drown him. He's unflappable. The unsinkable Andre Pochon. 

Terra curls up next to her mother and runs the towel through her hair. After a few moments the urgent concern has faded back into a vague sadness and we all give in to exhaustion and grief and spend the next few hours tethered invisibly to one another, unspoken words brewing.

“Well I’m going to make dinner,” Candace announces. “I’m hungry.”

Everyone protests but she insists and no one has the energy to stop her.

 

\--------

 

“Connor, help me,” I whisper.

“What? What is it?” He looks panicked.

“Nothing life threatening, chill. But we can’t let everyone just go back to their rooms.”

“Why not?” he sighs. He sinks into the sofa and I sink down next to him.

“Because. We just can’t.”

“I get it. I just don’t think they’re ready for it yet. Things are going to get really ugly if we try to force it. They’ll just fight.”

“They need to fight. They need to fight and make up. You need to fight and make up. None of you actually blame him, right?" He shakes his head quietly. "Your mom wouldn't. You know it. She would want you to remember her and the good times. Do you have anything...you know, of hers? A picture or something?”

My mom calls to me from the kitchen. “Terra, can you help me with dinner?” Josh gets up and tries to go upstairs. “No you don’t, mister!” she yells at him. “We’re going to eat before you go back to your room to stare at the walls. There’s plenty of time for that.”

“Just do what you can,” I hiss at Connor, glad that my mom’s got the ball rolling. “Tell some stories. Remember the good things.” He glares up at me half-heartedly. “Just do it!” I command and smack him on the back of the head.

I go to the kitchen to help my mother and watch Connor as he pulls a photo album from a shelf on the wall and I see him draw them in, one by one (Josh is last and the most difficult) until they’re huddled together and laughing or crying, wiping their eyes and high fiving and holding one another loosely around the shoulders.

Dinner is rehydrated mashed potatoes. Rehydrated meat. Rehydrated vegetables. It's clean and it's better than crackers and energy bars and roadkill. I smile to myself as I pull dishes from their places in the cupboards when my mother grunts and doubles over.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know, I feel--aaahhhhh!” she groans hard and her face flushes pale as she clutches her stomach. I look down at her feet, at the sudden bloom of red on her bare feet under her skirt.

  
“Mom!” Panic takes over my body and I run to her but I’m helpless. I don’t know anything about this.

“This can’t be--” she pants, “This can’t be happening! It’s way too soon!” Her eyes are squeezed shut in pain and she squats down almost like she has no choice, her body is telling her that this is happening. Now. She falls back onto her tailbone, screaming. I am vaguely aware that we’re now surrounded. She pulls up her skirt and the blood is everywhere, pouring from her body.

“Mom!” I wail. “Mom, please! Tell me what to do!”

“I--I don’t know,” she whispers, fear twisting her vocal chords. “Terra, baby, I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

 

\----------

 

She screams. A lot. And there’s a lot of blood. I feel Candace’s belly and it’s rock hard.

She’s not going to make it.

She’s not going to make it, and her baby is not going to make it.

I’m a father twice over and I can feel it. This is wrong.

 

\-----------

 

There’s nothing we can do. I can’t even offer verbal advice or comfort. Josh and I sit back and watch, helpless, as Candace fades. She whispers non-stop to Terra when she’s not screaming, which is most of the time. And then she stops. And there’s a flurry of activity and discussion about what to do or not to do about the baby and then that also is a non-issue as after one or two flurries visible from outside her body, the movement slows and stops. She was less than 30 weeks. Even if there was something we could do there is nothing we could have done to save the baby outside her womb. We simply were not equipped let alone trained to deal with it.

When it’s all done we have another body and a half to bury and dinner isn’t even cold yet.

It’s all wrong.

All of it is wrong.

I pull Terra off of her mother and it takes awhile. She doesn’t want to let go.

I take her to her room and lay down with her, curling up with her until she cries herself to sleep.

Two things run on a loop in my mind like a glitch, like I’m stuck. Angry. Raging. Aggressively affectionate and broken for this girl who’s lost her only family and everything that was hopeful about the future. I can’t move past it.

None of this is fair.

None of this is right.

For any of us.

 


	22. | KY | the end pt. 1

 

 

We move her body to the deck and cover it with another sheet. Another body, another sheet.

Somehow the blood gets cleaned up and Amanda spends a long time getting rid of the traces. Every single drop is gone when she's done. Like it never happened. Except it did.

I've gone beyond pain into some world where nothing hurts. Nothing is anything at all. I know I should check on Terra but I can't make my body get out of the chair it sank into who knows how long ago. The sun has gone down. Andre force fed us the meal she prepared. We're all aware that we can't waste the food. But he reminds us, over and over.

Finally Dad holds out his hand and pulls me up from the chair.

"She needs you, Connor. You know how she feels." _You've both lost your mothers now,_ are his unspoken words.

"Okay," a voice I don’t recognize croaks from my throat.

"And _you_ ," he turns to Josh. "You can't let her take care of everyone. She needs some comfort too. She lost her whole family, remember? You're her family now. You did that. You brought her here. Go!"

He swats us both on the back and sends us on our way, then he sits down on the sofa and takes Andre under one arm and Amanda under the other, Sam curled up in Andre's lap like a long cat. We'll repay him later for this. He lost the love of his life, and we can't let him forget we know. Later.

We stand in the doorway of Terra's room, watching the two of them sleep. Roxie stirs, as if she can feel Josh's eyes on her. She probably can. A mix of her survival instincts and my brother's supernova star presence. They're an odd couple but they work, for these times.

I look at Terra and her tear stained, puffy little face cracks open the numbness in my heart.

Roxie looks at us and scrunches up her nose in annoyance. Josh goes to her. He takes her hand and tries to pull her out of bed but she pulls him down instead and he kicks off his shoes and climbs in behind her.

I go to the other side of the bed and get in beside Terra, who opens her bloodshot eyes at all the movement and grunts her disapproval. But she accepts my arms around her and the kiss I plant on her temple with a tear that slides down her cheek.

"What are you guys doing?" she rubs her eyes in protest.

"Puppy pile!" Josh squeals from the other side of the bed as his fingers reach out to tickle anything that moves and it's so sudden and so absurd it works. We all dissolve into irrational, manic giggles.

"We're all in the No Mom club now," Terra's giggles do a 180 into a choked and bitter laugh/sob.

"Oh baby girl," I hold her head to my chest as she lets it out. It's true. We are. Josh's brow wrinkles in sympathy and he kisses Roxie softly on the cheek and we all hold Terra and each other, cocooned in our puppy pile. The first official meeting of the Motherless Fuckers Club.

 


	23. | KY | the end pt. 2

The zombies break through the fence that night. We have no choice but to leave Candace’s body on the deck for nearly two weeks while we mop up undead and re-patch the fence until it holds. Luckily the temperature plummets and we don’t have to deal with decay. We put her in the ground next to Michelle as soon as we can. The rest of the bodies we burn. Lanchen, Shannon, everyone.

Josh relapses into despair for a few weeks after that. But we pull him back out. Terra proves to be tougher and more resilient than anyone ever dreamed, including me.

When Chris’s ankle finally heals, he and Josh and Connor burn away their sadness in construction and defense. They have moments, private and sad, where they stand over her grave and comfort one another and none of us intrude. He keeps his grief tight inside his chest, hidden. So when he chooses to let it be seen we respect his privacy. It’s not an easy thing to see, anyway.

The winter is hard. Grief and isolation take their toll. The lake freezes, and so do the undead. So we have a small reprieve from them. But the humans, they come after us again, and again, and again when rumors fly about a celebrity’s hold-out cabin in the woods. We never should have let anyone survive that first raid.

We run low on ammo. Connor gets creative. Everyone learns to sign, pretty much, to communicate with me. Which is sometimes an advantage tactically. We can communicate silently over distance without being understood by humans or heard by undead ears.

Josh and I train constantly. His body was never exactly thin but it was never as lean and muscular as he’s become. He misses having an audience. Andre tells me stories of how he used to light up rooms, eat up the attention. Now he’s collapsed a little inward. He still entertains us, he is still the goofy ultimately positive force he always was underneath but they tell me that he used to glow, that he used to fill stadiums and theater seats with his charm. I can see it. And I feel lucky, sometimes. But sometimes I don’t. He misses his old life and it eats at him. So he spends his energy on learning how to kill. It seems twisted and a waste. But who he is still survives, somehow. Emergency puppy piles, if we have to. Everyone piles up on him and we tickle him into his good natured surrender. We do it for anyone.

When I need it, Josh holds me all night, lets me cry and scream and wail and thrash, shushes me and smoothes my hair, rocks me and talks to me until I kiss him quiet, until I let him back in.

We watch all of his movies, one a week until I’ve seen them all. I declare Detention to be my favorite and make him teach me the dance scene until he can lift me up above his head, not just one leg but whole body, after we watch Dirty Dancing as well.

But it’s always Peeta that I see in him when he’s suffering.

Connor and Terra grow up and into each other. They become a unit that’s as inseparable as earth and sky. Two distinct entities, one thing.

We find a doctor in the spring in the town that’s starting to settle back into a civilization who checks us out and performs a vasectomy on Josh. I try to talk him into a tubal ligation but he won’t do it with no anesthesia. He says to come back in the fall when supplies have been gathered. I still have birth control. That and the vasectomy will have to be enough.

Sam’s parents wander back into town that summer. Pale, broken and thin. They spent the winter in central New Mexico with a group of Sikhs who took them in. The religious self-righteousness that was apparently Gary’s main focus last year has been replaced by a not so bad natured silence on the subject of religion. He offers opinions when he feels they apply but Terra says the change is astounding, especially since their son is very much involved with a man and there are (including Sam and Andre) three unmarried couples living under the same roof. Another stray mother and child find us, and a fourth couple is born. Angela wakes up the joy in Amanda that none of us had any hope of seeing again.

They all prove to be excellent additions and re-additions to the group though. We find livestock wandering wild and re-domesticate it. Chickens, goats, cows, even rabbits. We use the seeds in storage and learn by trial and error how to plant and grow. It takes a few seasons. But a few years down the line we’re almost self-sufficient.

Connor and Terra get pregnant.

The undead come and go, but less and less and less. Militias and semi-government groups have formed to sweep areas clean and local governments have started to spring up. Politics suck, as always. But Josh goes into the ring and runs for city council, and then mayor. He loves having an audience again. It’s not so different than the old Hollywood game, he tells me. I don’t care because he’s glowing again like I’ve never seen him and it makes me happy.  

Elli Hutcherson is born on time and with no complications a few months later. She’s beautiful, pale and sweet and quiet with dark curls and little rosebud cheeks. I enjoy being her whatever you call a godmother without religion. Eventually everyone moves into their own houses. Chris and Sam’s parents keep the cabin fortress and the rest of us move into town. We build walls and repair roads and keep a hard fought sanctuary.

Elli is joined by Angus and then little Felix. Connor and Terra run a school/workshop/farm where they attempt to fill every need that comes up and to teach the things that need to be taught. How to fight, how to grow things, and make things. How to think. There’s no age limit, no mind unused, no problem too big.

We have a small but full life. Smaller than he used to be, anyway. Much larger than I ever hoped. Larger and so much harder and sweeter.

**  
The world is mean and cruel for a long time. But it doesn’t break us. We never let it.**  



End file.
